KooKo - B2.2
Squad: Studio Silver
Partners: Lynn Visser, Veerle van Wijlen, XinHui Yang
My final project before my FBP was a research project and with that different from the first two projects I did. This time I entered the Studio Silver squad where we focused on elderly with dementia. Our goal was to stimulate elderly with dementia in nursing homes to participate in group activities in order to decrease the feeling of loneliness. For this research, we created the cooking tool KooKo. KooKo is a cooking therapy session to help bond elderly by letting them create something together. One tool that is used in this session is a cutting board that guides elderly how to cut a certain piece of food. Different tools would be created in order to fit the level of each individual elderly.'
During a KooKo session every elderly would get his own cooking tool to help build a meal. This meal could be a fruit salad or dinner guided by the caregivers. Like this, every person has his own task. However, everyone is needed to get to their common goal. The cutting board comes with a cutting template for specific kinds of foods. The type of food and the level of skills needed can be changed on the basis of the movement ability of the elderly. This way of therapy stimulates the elderly to help each other to create the meal.
Learning Points:
Unlike the previous projects, this project was a research project. Looking back, I would say that our focus was too much on research. This restricted us in developing our prototype more. However, this focus on research made us conduct our studies very well. I developed my Math, Data and Computing competency by learning from XinHui Yang, who was here on an exchange program.
This project was on the border of my vision. Working with people who have dementia can be rewarding, but is also exhausting. Helping these individuals enjoy their lives a little more isn't necessarily a part of health. However, helping them get a little less lonely is. It was mentally one of the thoughest projects I did. Nevertheless, I felt like I learned the most of it and during the user studies I felt rewarded by seeing the group grow towards eachother in a cooking session.