A student from Dresden is one of the winners of an Apple programming competition with an app that recreates the experiences of people with dementia. The core of Hendrik Schülke's application, called "Dementi", is a memory game with 16 pictures. However, there is a catch: every three moves, the images in the background swap. This means that instead of the solution you thought you had, you may suddenly turn over the wrong picture. The app is designed to make it possible to experience how people with dementia struggle with their perception of reality.
Schülke was inspired to develop the app by his grandmother's dementia. His idea is for users to be surprised by the problems they encounter when solving the memory puzzle. "You think you're the problem," says Schülke, describing the feeling. "It only works once". He could imagine that children, for example, could use the app to better understand the difficulties that their relatives with dementia experience in everyday life. The app is also intended to provide information about dementia.
