We have built care systems that keep people safe and engaged.
What we have not built, in most places, is the invitation to remain.
The art show they used to attend every year.
The family dinner where they still have things to say.
The theatre, the garden, the community that knew their name.
Presence-centred design is the work of changing that.
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THE PROBLEM WE WORK ON
The separation that happens β and doesn't have to.
When a person receives a dementia diagnosis, something else often begins alongside it: a quiet withdrawal from the world. Not because they can no longer participate. But because the world stops offering the invitation.
Nursing homes become borders rather than places of community. Cultural institutions design around the assumption that older adults with cognitive change won't come. Families adapt gatherings around the person with dementia rather than designing them to include them fully. The art shows, the theatres, the ordinary social fabric of life β these things don't disappear. The invitation does.
This is not inevitable. It is a design failure. And like most design failures, it can be addressed by design.
What SenStoria designs is not care in the clinical sense. It is the conditions under which people remain present in their own lives β and in the lives of the people and communities that matter to them.
OUR PRACTICE
Memory Experience Design
A field SenStoria is actively building.
Memory Experience Design draws on memory science, neuroaesthetics, narrative psychology, media psychology, and the living traditions of reminiscence and story. It applies these not to slow decline, but to design the conditions under which identity, meaning, and connection remain visible β in families, in care systems, in cultural institutions, and in public life.
The question it asks is not: what is being lost? It is: what can be held, designed for, and made more present?
Each context looks different. All are unified by one conviction: that presence is possible, and that it can be designed for.
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What We Design
Invitation back into life
Experiences, environments, and community programmes that bring people living with dementia back into the cultural and social fabric β the art shows, theatres, community spaces, and family gatherings they deserve to be part of. Design that says: you are still invited here.
Shared language for what matters
Frameworks that give families, care teams, and institutions the words to speak about identity, dignity, and change without reducing the person to their diagnosis. When language is precise and human, care becomes more human too.
Sensory and relational anchors
Objects, rituals, environments, and practices that help identity stay present in everyday life, because the body and the senses remember what words sometimes cannot hold. The aesthetic life of a person with dementia is not incidental. It is where presence lives.
β START HERE Β· OUR FLAGSHIP EXPERIENCE
Remembering Together
A guided experience for families navigating memory and identity change.
Some of the most important conversations between families never happen. Not because people don't want them β but because no one knows how to begin.
Remembering Together is a structured practice of recognizing someone β of saying: your life matters, your story deserves to be held, and you are still fully here. Grounded in reminiscence therapy and narrative psychology, it guides families through six chapters of meaning-making.
- A beautifully designed digital guide across six meaningful chapters
- A companion PDF to print, share, and hold alongside a loved one
- Facilitation guidance so the experience feels like a conversation
- Prompts designed to draw out meaning, not just memory
Ways to Work Together
Remembering Together
Digital Experience
A self-guided relational experience for families and individuals who want to begin preserving story, identity, and meaning at their own pace, before change feels urgent.Β
Guided Remembering
Flagship Facilitated Experience
A high-touch, facilitated process for families navigating early memory change or significant life transition. This is not therapy alone, nor memoir writing, nor crisis management. It is relational continuity design β helping families develop the shared language, practices, and anchors that keep a person fully present in the lives of those who love them.
Consulting & Advisory
Organizations & Care Systems
Systems-level experience design for care organizations, healthcare systems, and cultural institutions. We redesign care environments, develop shared language frameworks, train care teams in dignity-centered relational practice, and build the organizational infrastructure that keeps identity and meaning visible at scale. Working across North America and Europe.
Workshops & Speaking
Communities & Organizations
Interactive programs for professional communities, care teams, cultural organizations, and public audiences. Topics range from designing relational continuity in memory care to shared language frameworks for dignity-centered practice, caregiver identity and wellbeing, and the emerging field of Memory Experience Design.
Cultural & Immersive Experiences
Public & Participatory Work
Public-facing, participatory explorations of memory, identity, and intergenerational connection. Installations, performance collaborations, and community experiences that invite people to encounter the themes of Memory Experience Design in unexpected, embodied ways.
Begin HereΒ
Whether you are a family wanting to preserve a story before it fades. A care organization redesigning how you hold the people in your care. A cultural institution exploring what it means to keep memory visible across generations. Or simply someone who senses that something important deserves more attention than daily life allows.
We begin with a conversation.