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Caring for Alzheimer’s disease caregivers: A qualitative study investigating opportunities for exergame innovation

The number of informal caregivers for family members with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is rising dramatically in the United States. AD caregivers disproportionately experience numerous health problems and are often isolated with little support. An active lifestyle can help prevent and mitigate physical and psychological health concerns amongst AD caregivers. Research has demonstrated how pervasive exergames can encourage physical activity (PA) in the general population, yet little work has explored how these tools can address the significant PA barriers that AD caregivers face. To identify opportunities for design, we conducted semi-structured interviews and participatory design sessions with 14 informal caregivers of family members with AD. Our findings characterize how becoming an AD caregiver profoundly impacts one’s ability to be active, perspectives on being active, and the ways that exergames might best support this population. We discuss implications for design and how our findings challenge existing technological approaches to PA promotion. 

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Key Information

Type of Reference
Conf
Type of Work
Conference paper
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN/ISSN
2573-0142
Publication Year
2019
Issue Number
CSCW
Journal Titles
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Volume Number
3
Start Page
130