Alzheimer’s disease is a one of the common forms from dementia. And many did assume that Alzheimer’s and dementia had the same definition after hearing similar criteria of symptoms. After de-constructing the definition between Alzheimer’s and Dementia, it has given more specific direction to generate new ideas regarding Alzheimer’s disease. The first research ongoing will be towards the exploration of the visual perspective during Alzheimer stage of parietal lobe and to understand the capabilities of them undergoing the process on that stage. The cause of this specific topic is because on how the brain actually controls the action of everything in your body including the magnificent mind itself. During the primary research process, the topic had come upon regarding Alzheimer deteriorates part by part in your brain until it no longer functions at all. The only part of the brain will be focusing will be more towards parietal lobe which the part of the brains that controls the sense, the sights from the eyes, hearing from the ear and smells from the nose. The second research that will be researching will be regarding how music effects on Alzheimer patients. The patients themselves are slowly losing their memories from Alzheimer’s but however there has been music therapy for Alzheimer patients that helps them improve their lifestyle despite the sickness that the patients are having. According to Harper, C (2018), he stated that the songs affection towards someone can be often determined by the persons past emotional stages or experiences with that song. This second research is really interesting because music is still an artform but in sound waves, but how does that affect the Alzheimer patients. Maybe it can be explored deeper with more research in hand. The third research will be exploring more with interactivity objects and how will it solve the problem faced by Alzheimer patients on their daily basis. Having to deal with problems like what is their daily task or even the smallest things could be forgotten in a blink of an eye. The patients are needed to be cared at all times to avoid small incidents like getting lost in the city not knowing where they stay. With this research, hopefully can be fulfilled by finding a solution for their problems.

​

The proposition towards the first research is that how photography could be helpful to understand what does an Alzheimer’s patients do or have to deal with it to a daily basis. Next, the second proposition towards the second research is that how would the project proceed with an interactive xylophone style piano? This concept will be made easily for the people with Alzheimer plays the music without learning how to play. Lastly, the third proposition towards the third research, how long can their memories retain and how much can they remember from their own memories. In this current era of technology, smartphones are getting more advance and maybe to be able to help out Alzheimer’s patients with new applications that would help them regarding memories or maybe even doing a daily task.

​

All is lost is a project that is related to Alzheimer’s disease. The context of this was from a video that talks about the general idea of Alzheimer’s and it breaks it down into parts by part during the video. What caught the attention was when the video mentioned about the part about parietal lobe. Which controls the eyes, sense, taste and smell. From there an idea was formed regarding the visual blurring on the eyesight. But to do that, a full understanding of the brain’s anatomy must be first thing to learn. This research will be moving towards into solving the issues regarding what Alzheimer’s patients faces on a daily basis. Exploration of the visual perspective during Alzheimer stage of parietal lobe and to understand the capabilities of them undergoing the process on that stage. The first research to start this topic off will be about how parietal lobe which controls the functionality of the eyes, sense, taste and smell. To be more specific it will be the eyes that will be focused on. According to Barriga, A, (2019), he mentioned that the condition will cause a blurry vision during the initial stage of Alzheimer’s that will interfere with daily everyday activities, making the person to appear hazy or out of focus. The second context explains about how music effects on Alzheimer patients. How does music actually bring back the memories of the persons experience through their lives. Alzheimer’s disease and many other under the forms of dementia is still continuing to increase as years goes by. When it comes to treatment, the first solution is drugs or medicine then as years progresses, music therapy was applied to help Alzheimer’s patients as well. Music is just like a medicine but its just in a wave length and the combination of good tones that helps with the brain. Music is just one of the solutions to ease the patient’s quality of life as there is no cure for Alzheimer’s. Music effects does awake some precious memories maybe could be a painful memory or could be a good memory and just by having that the music awakens or triggers old memories that could have been good or bad. According to Dickison, E. (2014, November), it was stated that many say that “where words fail, music speaks” and this motto can be seen firsthand in patients struggling with Alzheimer’s. This statement is agreeable to understand that how Alzheimer’s patient had to endure a lot due to their motor ability to do things on a daily basis. But when music comes in to play, the patients feels like it was a second nature that the patients can remember the beat, rhythm and etc. When listening to familiar music such as popular folk songs, nursery rhymes and songs from the top 100 charts, the musical memory retrieval involved areas both within and outside of the temporal lobes, including frontal and parietal regions (Leggieri et al., 2019). Music choices are just as important like taking a drug or a medicine from a doctor which the doctor know what’s best for a patient’s wellbeing. While the method of helping the patience is much more accessible and very highly versatile. The third context is about how Alzheimer patients always forgets a recently learned information like could be as simple like their daily task or could be an event or forgetting important dates as well. Being forget does sound very painful to someone especially when the person who feels it are either patient’s partners or family members. Helpers or nurses are able to help Alzheimer patients for their daily needs but what happens if they are on their own without any help. One of the ways to help the patients is to create routines for them to follow everyday and keep maintaining the routines in order to help them to cope with it. By maintaining routine, it can save a lot of time and energy that would not require to problem solving issues. It is stated that routines have to be performed regularly to reduce failures in the performance of activities (Imhof et al., 2006). This method is to avoid any incoming stress towards the Alzheimer’s patient with shame and embarrassment.

​

The topic in regards to Alzheimer is important because even though there isn’t a cure invented yet for Alzheimer, but designers can still help to ease the patients with new solutions and new ways to help them with their lives. It could be understanding their way of doing things or how they handle things. Young adults are unaware of how to handle Alzheimer patient’s and they lack the patience to handle it. It is the utmost important that Alzheimer’s are still human being just like everyone. Especially when the Alzheimer’s disease can affect vision that could affect the person’s view. “Alzheimer’s & Eye Sight: Is There a Connection?” (2018) mentioned that decreased visual perception can lead to misinterpretation of situations and create safety risks for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia. And often it was viewed to be a bad thing because they might have a chance to hurt themselves if they can’t see things correctly what’s in-front of them. It is important to spread the awareness of how do we see from the Alzheimer’s patients’ point of view. Next, music is definitely one of the ways to help Alzheimer’s patients cope as they are not really needed to do anything physically but how the brain plays back the memories and it was stated that music's ability to tap into procedural memory and pull on our emotional heartstrings may mean it can do more than simply allow dementia sufferers to access pristine memories from the past (Wolchover, 2012). Although music therapy is mostly used for many treatments for mental health related symptoms, this therapy is the simplest ways to help an Alzheimer’s patients. This second research idea is important to the people who are taking care of the Alzheimer’s patients with much simpler solution to play music with accessible music or playing music physically. Following up with the next idea regarding the interactivity object with Alzheimer’s patients. Short memory loss is a big fuss when they don’t remember a small information given just a moments ago or a task to buy groceries but couldn’t remember what to get for in the shopping list. Creating an object or an interactive app to help with their daily task will ease their lives. Design responsible is important in this idea because designers are not only just for designing but to help and give back to the community. It was stated that the world around us is comprised of decisions that have evolved as a result of other designers experimenting over several millennia (Mei, 2018). Lastly, the third research idea regarding helping Alzheimer’s with their memory loss problem on a daily basis. Although making an interactive object will not change their health situation but it could help with their lives easier as there are many things could improve with the objects they interact everyday on a daily basis. Even so, to design responsible and inclusively to Alzheimer’s would be beneficial and to understand better their needs to the nurses or family members who are taking care of them. It was stated that Supportive features and design considerations help counteract changes in cognition and perception caused by the disease progression (McQuilkin, n.d.). Having to keep the motor skill running is important so that it will challenges the mind and body to keep moving around, if not the condition of the body will keeps forgetting to move around. Therefore, it is proven useful that by having a daily routine will improve their motor skills. Or maybe an activity could be as simple as brushing your own hair or take a walk outside the house or nursing home. Prompting these actions on a daily basis do give good results in them being healthy and pro active in their own capabilities. Next, looking for an everyday object that could simplify the object or could solve their issue such as not remembering where they last put the object at. Observing the objects that they used are sometimes a bit challenging to them as sometimes they can mistake for a different object such as a spoon and a fork. Next, photos are a good way to help with this research as pictures can stimulates the brain’s memories to remember the person. It is stated that short-term memory for picture locations decreased as the emotional arousal of the pictures increased, while long-term recall was better for the emotional items, compared with the neutral ones (Huijbers et al., 2011). Pictures or images associates through photographs that plays a big role to allow those who are living with Alzheimer’s to remember or reminisce about their past lives.

​

The methods for the first idea will be ta experiment with using photography which involves experimenting with camera exposure. To be more exact it will be the shutter speed experiments photography. Looking into different practitioners who are involved with Alzheimer’s related photography and looking into a motion blur shutter speed photography. One of the practitioners is called William Miller, who is a photographer based on New York City, he is diagnosed with Huntington’s disease which affects his motor skills, memory loss and unpredictable behavior. One of his projects called “We travel to and Shall Be Lost in Always” project shows his experience with the disease with video, sculpture and photography.  One of the first methods is to experimenting with shutter speed photography. It is stated that Slow shutter speed photography is just another way to be creative with your camera while having a little fun with intentional blur (Slagle, n.d.). The methods for the second idea will be to experimenting combination of xylophone and a piano key to create the new instrument for the Alzheimer’s to interactivity or to listen. This method of experimenting will be a musical activity to determine that do can they play the instrument without using too much brain power or memorizing. And by doing this method, it will keep the Alzheimer’s patient motor skill and memory running as it is a simple activity for them.

The methods for the third idea will be to looking into daily objects that they are used daily to create something new to ease the patients’ lives

From this current state of research, the only best solution is to create an object could relieve an Alzheimer’s memories or the other method could be finding a solution for their everyday uses of object to make their lives easier.

​

​

Conclusion

​

The findings in this project have been experimented towards a few different methods. There were four methods which has been experimented toward this “All is lost” project. One of the first method that was experimented was about doing photography with shutter speed and with photo manipulation to create a better outcome of it. Firstly, the starting of the shutter speed experiment was to take photos of full body and near face shots. The photos with different shutter speeds actually affects the image outcome. As looking through the photos of the first experiments, another idea was though about having a movement in the background with the point of interest is standing still. But having movement in the background shouldn’t be just people, so it was tested with small lights with shutter speed that will create a neon lighting effect on the outcome of the photography. With another experiment that involves photo manipulation without the small lights taken. That do reflect on how Alzheimer’s patient sees with a more abstract motion in mind. Next experiment is about the idea of having two different worlds. One of the practitioners that was researched during this experiment was a photographer named Stephen McMennamy who does combo photography’s in the most bizarre way ever. This experiment represents the two different worlds in the perspective of an Alzheimer’s patient, one side that shows the positive photography while the other side shows the bad side of the photography. This experiment produced an outcome that overlooks the both side in the mind of the Alzheimer’s. Next, this experiment involves the combination of mixed media which is painting and photography. The painting on photography experiments goes as the paints will be on a face of a person in the picture. To this experiment represent one of the issues on how Alzheimer’s patients doesn’t recognize or could not tell who the person was. Mixed media is one of the ways to incorporate to create a better outcome. After overlooking at the previous experiments, another idea came through. The following experiment that would mostly rely on photo manipulation that in correlation with the shutter speed experiment and the mixed media experiment. What would it look like by using a mixed media outcome and manipulate the image experimenting with the shadow and depth? Bringing the focus towards the subject while making the rest of the background with depth. Making the outcome of 3D effect in the picture. The next experiment would be recording a video with the painting slowly sliding down on the picture. This idea came upon during the experimentation of the mixed media experiment. The paint sliding down on the image will represents the how the view of an Alzheimer is always in that state. Lastly, this experiments that combines the two ideas from the initial ideas from the combination of a combination of 2 instruments with a zoetrope. This experiment combines the idea into a music box that plays while the zoetrope functions as a spinning photo album. This experiment idea is planned to bring back memories by using the music therapy method and with photos included with it.

​

The idea that was originally had in mind was a just a photography outcome but after reviewing the first time, the outcome looks too plain and too obvious at the state where it doesn’t look too appealing enough to be an outcome. To make it more appealing for the outcome, changes must be made towards the outcome. It turns out that using real color photography has too much color for it and it will make the outcome look too plain and simply. By playing with black white filters or monochrome to make it feels like it was a photo from their olden days. The outcome for it has a better impact compared to other experiments which was conducted. The other experiments regarding the music box photo album didn’t came out as expected due to a very expected and too obvious outcome. During the creating stage of this idea, there was concerns about the idea prefer to have a physical photo album because of the actual outcome of the object will be a big size object that could interact. It was a problem in the end and the idea was halted because of that particular reason. Lastly, mostly of the topic regarding Alzheimer was in par with dementia for most of the research. There was very less engagement towards design with Alzheimer’s in general. Although it is in the same area of context, it is still a challenge to bring forward this topic as it is not always brought out in design stage.

​

This positions the designer as someone who wants to contribute back to the society and to spread the awareness and knowledge to everyone and everywhere about Alzheimer’s disease. Not everyone’s education is on par with everyone around them and the duty of a designer to educate them as well. Being a designer is not only to create a visually artistically paintings or art but to solve one of many problems that is being faced everyone or by anyone. If the audience is able to feel what the Alzheimer’s patients are feeling, then it means that the project is a success. However, there is still much more in-depth research to be done as it the information regarding Alzheimer is very common. Could have think more outside of the box method to create a better outcome. This project does show how far a designer must put into their long research and more in-depth story or context. Even comments from peers and colleagues explains that research is the utmost import in every design creation because everything has its reason and the reason can be the ultimate idea that will be the striking point of the idea. And lastly, proper time management could be very helpful as it helps with the projects scheduling. A good designer is able to follow the schedule and manage their time wisely to complete their task in hand.