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Defining Personas for Assistive Technology Development: Improving the Cognitive Support of Older Adults on the Dementia Continuum

Guillaume Spalla et al.

Interacting with Computers2025https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae060article
AJG 2ABDC B
Weight
0.41

Abstract

Executive function operations (Formulate a Goal, Plan, Carry out the task and Verify goal attainment) are important for supporting independence, and are often impacted early in dementia, yet are seldom considered in the design of assistive technologies for cognition for older adults with dementia. This article introduces personas, i.e., fictitious, specific, concrete representations of target users, to support the design of assistive technologies for cognition from the perspective of executive dysfunction. We first categorized the assistance most appropriate to provide, based on a quantitative secondary analysis of annotated videos of 16 older adults who received assistance during a functional assessment. The annotations of the videos classified the assistance required for task completion into categories. We then designed the personas based on this quantitative secondary analysis. A persona was designed for each of the first three executive function operations: Formulate a goal, Plan and Carry out the task. No persona was designed for Verify goal attainment because assistance was seldom provided for this operation. Stimulate the thought process and clarification of instructions were the categories of assistance most frequently identified overall. Each persona is illustrated with examples of assistance. Stimulate the thought process was the category of assistance most frequently provided for goal formulation and plan, and motivational assistance for carry out the task. We defined several design recommendations to support the design of assistive technologies for cognition for older adults on the dementia continuum, including 1) stimulate the person to reason and act by themselves first; 2) design context-aware assistive technologies; 3) consider “goal formulation” and “plan” executive operation dysfunctions; 4) personalize assistive technologies to the specific needs of each individual; 5) do not rely only on personas to take individual needs into account. Personas created from real situations can serve as a tool to better understand the assistance this population requires in order to develop assistive technologies for cognition.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae060

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@article{guillaume2025,
  title        = {{Defining Personas for Assistive Technology Development: Improving the Cognitive Support of Older Adults on the Dementia Continuum}},
  author       = {Guillaume Spalla et al.},
  journal      = {Interacting with Computers},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae060},
}

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Evidence weight

0.41

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10
M · momentum0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.