Instructions Not Included: Dementia-Friendly approaches to DMI Design

The development of bespoke musical tools such as many accessible digital musical instruments (ADMI) can necessitate specific design constraints. Within a field which often promotes out of the box thinking and new interactions with experimental technologies, how do we design for user groups where these notions of interaction will be less familiar, and/or increasingly challenging due to the progression of cognitive decline? The relationship between age and the use of technology is understood within the wider context of human computer interaction (HCI), however, how this applies specifically to musical interaction or contributes to a 'dementia-friendly' approach to digital musical instrument (DMI) design is drastically underrepresented within the NIME community. Following a scoping review of technology for arts activities designed for older adults with cognitive decline, we ran a series of involvement activities with a range of stakeholders living with, or caring for those living with dementia. Consolidating the knowledge and experience shared at these events, we propose five considerations for designing dementia-friendly digital musical instruments. We illustrate our approach with a range of new instruments co-designed to enable increased interaction with music for people living with dementia.