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Frederik Vincx edited this page Aug 21, 2017 · 6 revisions

Prisma – add color to caregiving

Read on to learn more about Prisma and how you can help.

Table of contents

  • What is Prisma
  • Creating software for people with dementia
  • Vocabulary
  • Design principles
  • Design assets
  • Milestones
  • Roadmap
  • Business model
  • Contributing

What is Prisma?

Prisma is a digital service that helps people with dementia get more personal care. This happens by showing care givers life stories of the people with dementia.

There are two sides to the solution:

  1. A family app where families are invited to reminisce with their loved ones. The app comes preloaded with general interest topics to talk about and family members can add their own memories in text, image, and video.

  2. A care home app where caregivers see the stories of the people with dementia. Every day the app highlights different stories to help the care givers learn about the people with dementia step by step.

Creating software for people with dementia

Prisma is an atypical open-source project. We're building software for people with very special needs. People with dementia.

Someone in the world develops dementia every 3 seconds. There were an estimated 46.8 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2015 and this number is believed to be close to 50 million people in 2017. This number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 75 million in 2030 and 131.5 million in 2050. Source.

Learn more about dementia by watching this one-hour documentary by Louis Theroux: Extreme love - dementia. Stream it on Netflix.

To make sure that we really solve the needs of people with dementia, we start and end with the actual users. We go out to care homes to learn what needs to be built. We interview family members, personnel at care homes, and dementia specialists. Based on these learnings we design solutions that we first test before building.

The development of the software only starts after we have done this preparation. There needs to be a design that solves a specific problem and that has been thoroughly tested and improved upon.

Get an overview of the product roadmap.

Vocabulary

With a specific vocabulary we can clearly communicate about the core concepts in the service.

  • Person – a loved one with dementia
  • Care home – an organization that hosts elderly in need of assistance
  • Caregiver – a professional nurse or orthopedagogue that helps people in a care home or at home
  • Family – family members of the person with dementia
  • Story – a piece of content that you can reminisce with. It could be a video, image, or text about the life of the person, or a general interest story that sparks a conversation.
  • Album – a collection of stories. This could be for example childhood, family, sports, events,..

Design principles

This project started when service designer Frederik Vincx did a one-month internship in a care home in Zonhoven, Belgium. Together with a team of design researchers, dementia specialists and caregivers, he conceived the project through a structured design approach.

Follow the initial design process in this blog post with videos.

During the month of research, the team set out to find a solution to help caregivers have more empathy for the people they care for.

The team created seven principles to guide the further development of the project.

  • Helps build a relationships between caregiver and person with dementia
  • Family as an active storyteller
  • Limited efforts and initiative of the caregiver
  • Stays interesting for the caregiver
  • Little setup for the care home
  • Inspires action
  • The stories can evolve
  • The info is shareable

Design assets

All parts of Prisma share a similar look and feel. We use the same fonts, colors, components,.. When you design something new, check this below styletile. Styletile

Milestones

August 18, 2017: beta test with volunteers.

September 5, 2017: guided beta test at care home Huis Vandecruys in Deinze, Belgium.

September 16, 2017: launch of the Flemish version of the family app during the worldwide week of dementia.

Roadmap

There's a clear product roadmap in this Trello board.

Business model

Contributing

For now the team keeps the project controlled. We want to create a first version to thoroughly test. If you'd like to help, contact the core team and explain why you would like to join. Tell us about your motivation and what you want to get out of this.

Help we can use:

  • Creating an iOS app version from our Ionic code base.
  • Creating a web version from our Ionic code base.

The different repositories to work on:

Clone this wiki locally