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 3

    Week 3

    Week 3 started a little unexpectedly. Monday was off due to the biiiiig snowstorm in Pittsburgh ❄️. Despite the weather, the team made strong progress across hardware, art, research, programming, and narrative design. On the hardware side, we built a physical prototype by mounting a Vive tracker onto an actual watering can to test how…

  • Week 2

    Week 2

    This week focused on clarifying our direction and translating our ideas into clearer, shareable artifacts across design, programming, art, and hardware.

 On the design side, we created an experience sheet that breaks the installation into different phases, helping us articulate how the experience evolves over time. We also produced an initial storyboard draft to visualize…

  • Week 1

    Week 1

    As the semester began, we quickly aligned on our next steps: deepening our research, developing a more solid project pitch, and reaching out to professionals for advice and feedback. Once we were back at ETC, we spent time exploring the CAVERN space and generating initial ideas for an experience design that would meaningfully take advantage…

  • Week 0

    Week 0

    We began with the idea of pitching a project to the ETC that would fully take advantage of the CAVERN space. Our goal was to design an immersive, interactive installation that creates a transformative experience for the general public, inspired by the cognitive and emotional disruptions caused by dementia.We chose dementia as our core topic…