Writing the Interviews

Now I had a firmer direction for my project, I wanted to interview someone with early dementia and someone who cared for someone with dementia.

First, I had to write the interview questions. I had looked at how to write user interviews in Week 03 - Design & Strategy, but I also wanted to explore how to best interview my specific users. I felt this was especially important when interviewing someone with dementia due to this being a memory issue that could affect personality and irritability.

This resource on the very topic from the School for Social Care Research was really useful and offered a very detailed look at how to interview people with dementia. In particular, a section that covered how to respond to certain effects of dementia was really useful for writing and conducting interviews.

Attention and concentration lapses

• Conduct interview in familiar place, or place that is not likely to be distracting
• Redirect conversation if possible

Decreased abstract

• Restructure questions to concrete topics reasoning
• Use participant’s wording that is familiar and comfortable to them

Difficulty with word finding

• Give ample time to respond
• If participant seems uncomfortable, offer reassurance and help

Memory loss

• Use reminiscence