Dementia Design Info

www.DementiaDesignInfo.org was created to help designers, providers, and others interested in creating supportive shared residential care settings for people with dementia. It is based on an extensive review of the literature, and organizes the information into an easily searchable compendium of practical information. The site is still under construction. At this time, it only contains information about bedrooms, toilet rooms and bathing areas, with just over 300 records in it. Other spaces will be added in the future.

Users to the site can search by space (e.g., bedroom, bathing area) and/or user need (e.g., privacy, safety). Search results are individual records structured to link specific environmental features or characteristics with behavioral or organizational outcomes, and each record indicates whether the outcomes are validated by research, reflect expert consensus or are unverified. Many records also include both images and original references for the data.

There are also a few case studies, which provide more in-depth information about a single site. At this time, these case studies were all part of the original research project that was the genesis for this website.

We invite you to browse through the site, and give us comments and feedback—either suggestions for how to improve the site, or for more information we should include. Click on the Contact Us button to send us a general email with comments and suggestions. There are specific pages for submitting new information to the website, which we will review and incorporate as appropriate.

This website is dedicated to M. Powell Lawton, as it was his vision and dedication to improving environments for people with dementia that gave this project its start.