An Immersive experience that explores the emotional toll on caretakers of dementia patients though an interactive garden metaphor installation

Project Introduction

This project is an immersive interactive installation inspired by the experiences of dementia caregivers. Instead of directly portraying the disease, we use the metaphor of caring for a garden to represent caring for a person with dementia. As you interact with the space, the garden responds to your attention and care. But over time, it continues to decline, no matter what you do. There is no way to “win” this experience. That inevitability is intentional, and reflects the emotional reality of dementia caregiving: the effort is constant, the responsibility is heavy, and progress is not guaranteed. Through this experience, we aim to build understanding of how demanding caregiving can be, while also raising awareness of dementia, encouraging earlier recognition of warning signs and earlier intervention to help slow its progression.

Team Remnants

Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University

Demo Video

Experience Walkthrough

  • Week 15 – Final Presentation

    Week 15 – Final Presentation

    Presentation PowerPoint Presentation Recording: (starting at 2:35:00)

  • Week 14

    Week 14

    In our final week, we focused on resolving remaining programming and hardware issues and preparing the experience for the final showcase. We are ensuring that interactions, timing, and technical systems were working smoothly and reliably. On the technical side, we made a final adjustment to the digging interaction. We found that players were still not…

  • Week 13 – Soft Opening

    Week 13 – Soft Opening

    This week focused on improving clarity in both visual design and interaction guidance, while continuing to refine physical components of the installation. We finalized the design of the seed packets. Initially, we experimented with editing real flower images, but ultimately decided to shift toward a more stylized approach by illustrating the flowers. This better aligns…

  • Week 12

    Week 12

    This week was a mix of intensive building and valuable feedback from domain experts. On Monday, two of our team members spent the entire day in the woodshop completing the flower boxes. We now have four physical flower boxes installed in the space. Having these in place allowed us to better distribute interactions throughout the…

  • Week 11

    Week 11

    This week, we focused on iterating based on playtest feedback, addressing both usability issues and overall experience quality. Much of our work centered on fixing bugs, refining timing, and improving clarity so that guests can engage more smoothly with the experience. On the programming side, we resolved a range of technical issues, including lighting inconsistencies,…

  • Week 10 – Playtest Day

    Week 10 – Playtest Day

    This week was centered around preparing for ETC Playtest Day on Saturday, when visitors from around Pittsburgh were invited to experience student projects. Our goal was to bring the experience to the strongest state possible for external playtesting. Building on the issues we identified last week, we began with a long design meeting to rethink…