Hot Off The Press — Using a Board Game as Critical Design for Relational Communication in Dementia Care

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Published on December 17, 2025

This programme of research advances relational approaches to communication in dementia care through an interdisciplinary, community-engaged framework that brings together global health, design, and digital media. A defining feature of the work is the collaborative involvement of York University students from Design, Digital Media, and Global Health who worked alongside Dr. Shital Desai in an applied, research-through-practice setting.

The research activities began with formative empirical studies examining how people living with dementia (PLwD) interact with everyday and emerging technologies, conducted in partnership with a community dementia care organization. These observational studies involved guided interaction sessions with mixed-reality systems and were complemented by a participatory co-design workshop using the TUNGSTEN (Tools for User Needs Gathering to Support Technology Engagement) toolkit. Across both activities, PLwD, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and technology developers participated in mixed groups, engaging in hands-on technology interaction and reflective exercises such as Show and Tell. Together, these empirical activities generated rich multimodal data capturing gesture, rhythm, gaze, hesitation, and co-regulation between PLwD and caregivers, while also providing a practical, interdisciplinary learning environment in which students worked directly with community partners, developed participatory research skills, and contributed substantively to data generation and analysis.

Insights from these activities informed an iterative Research in and through Design (Ri&tD) process, during which the team developed a series of exploratory prototypes. Design and Digital Media students led material experimentation, visual communication, and prototyping, while the global health student contributed perspectives on accessibility, equity, and care systems. Advisory sessions with older adults supported refinement and ensured sensory accessibility and emotional resonance. These activities functioned both as research outputs and as experiential learning opportunities that modelled interdisciplinary collaboration in practice.

This design genealogy culminated in Neighbourly, a tactile board game designed to support relational communication between PLwD and caregivers through shared play. The game uses familiar neighbourhood settings, everyday activity prompts, and flexible rules to scaffold co-regulation, multimodal reciprocity, and shared agency. Neighbourly operates as both a communication support and a research instrument, enabling observation of relational dynamics during play. Students were centrally involved in the design, testing, and refinement of the game, gaining hands-on experience in translating research insights into tangible interventions.

These activities are consolidated in an open-access, peer-reviewed publication in Societies (2025), Living Counter-Maps: A Board Game as Critical Design for Relational Communication in Dementia Care . The publication introduces the Living Counter-Maps Framework, which integrates participatory counter-mapping and Ri&tD to study relational communication in care contexts.

Ongoing activities include a participatory evaluation study with PLwD–caregiver dyads and planned co-design sessions using Neighbourly as a boundary object. Collectively, this programme demonstrates how interdisciplinary, student-engaged research can contribute to global health scholarship while fostering meaningful collaboration across design, digital media, and health disciplines.

Find the full article here: "Living Counter-Maps: A Board Game as Critical Design for Relational Communication in Dementia Care"

Desai, Shital, Peris, Sheryl, Saraiya, Ria, & Remesat, Rachel. (2025). Living Counter-Maps: A Board game as Critical Design for Relational Communication in Dementia care. Societies, 15(12), 347. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15120347

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