Babbelbord: A Personalized Conversational Game for People with Dementia

Abstract

We present a demonstration of the board game named “Babbelbord” that stimulates narrative reminiscence in a novel interactive, personalized and entertaining way for people with dementia. Narrative reminiscence is part of reminiscence therapy which is often used in dementia care as it reduces neuropsychiatric symptoms, and therefore improves the quality of life for people with dementia. Stimulating narrative reminiscence entails communicating personal memories with others without intent or evaluation. The Babbelbord game is a newly developed board game that was based on an old-fashioned game that is familiar to people with dementia. The purpose of the Babbelbord game is to reconnect older adults with dementia to their relatives and friends by stimulating narrative reminiscence with a personalized game question approach. The Babbelbord game provides interactive and entertaining conversation starters in a gamified way between people with dementia and their relatives. In this paper, we describe and demonstrate how the Babbelbord was designed to offer an engaging and gamified user experience, tailored for older adults affected by dementia.