Smarter Play: A Dementia-Informed Game Recommendation Interface for the Tovertafel
The Tovertafel is a projection-based game system widely used in elderly care homes to stimulate and engage residents living with dementia. While the system offers a range of games, care providers often lack the time, specialist knowledge, or clear guidance to select the most appropriate game for a given moment, resident group, or stage of the day. With dementia affecting cognition, mood, and energy levels in ways that vary significantly across individuals and throughout the day, the wrong choice of activity can mean missed therapeutic value or disengagement. The project set out to address this gap by building a recommendation interface grounded in dementia research and the realities of everyday care practice.
The team developed an interface that helps care providers select the most suitable Tovertafel game based on contextual factors including time of day, resident circumstances, and insights drawn from dementia research. Rather than presenting staff with an undifferentiated list of options, the tool guides decision-making in a way that is quick, intuitive, and evidence-informed, reducing the cognitive load on busy care providers while improving the quality of resident engagement. The interface was tested directly in care homes after development, allowing the team to validate their design choices in real-world conditions and refine the tool based on feedback from the staff who would use it daily.