The world keeps changing.
The people in it deserve to stay present in it.
Older adults and those living with memory change are not withdrawing from life. They are being designed out of it. The environments, systems, and relationships around them were built for one kind of mind, one kind of memory, one kind of presence.
That is a design problem...
which means it has design solutions.
THE PROBLEM
The separation that doesn't have to happen.
Every threshold brings change. Not everyone gets to stay.
A diagnosis. A shift in role. A parent who is still there but harder to reach. A community that stopped extending the invitation.
These moments are not only about memory. They are about belonging — about whether someone remains visible, known, and present in the lives of the people and places that matter to them.
Most of what we have built around aging responds to what is being lost. What it rarely attends to is what remains: the capacity for connection, for beauty, for being genuinely known.
People living with dementia are not post-life. They are post-invitation. And the invitation can be redesigned.
People living with dementia are not post-life. They are post-invitation. And the invitation can be redesigned.
OUR PRACTICE
Threshold Design
SenStoria works at the threshold: the moments when identity, relationships, and environment are all in motion simultaneously. We design across all three, because designing for only one is never enough.
Our practice is built on the Threshold of Threes framework — the conviction that a person is held in the world, or designed out of it, across three simultaneous domains.
Self — Identity, recognizability, the sense that a life still hangs together even as memory, roles, or capacities change.
Relationships — Family, community, the people who hold someone known. The relational system that keeps a person present.
Environment — The spaces, systems, and institutions that either welcome or exclude. The world that should still belong to everyone in it.
Memory Experience Design
Our specialist practice for families and institutions navigating cognitive change specifically. It draws on memory science, neuroaesthetics, narrative psychology, and family systems thinking to design for what remains, not only what is lost.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
Every engagement begins with a question.
What needs to be held here? Who has stopped being invited, and why? What would it mean for this person, this family, this organisation, to design for full presence rather than careful management?
SenStoria works across five areas. Each is a different scale of the same argument: that presence is possible, and that it can be designed for.
FACILITATED EXPERIENCE
Guided Remembering
High-touch relational continuity design for families navigating early memory change or life transition. We help families develop the shared language, sensory practices, and continuity rituals that keep a person genuinely present, not just remembered.
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ORGANIZATIONS & INSTITUTIONS
Threshold Design Consulting
For organizations ready to examine not just what their environments look like, but what they communicate about who belongs, who is visible and who is still invited. Four speciality areas include:
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COMMUNITIES & ORGANIZATIONS
Workshops & Speaking
Programs designed to move an audience, not just inform one. For care teams, cultural organisations, and professional audiences, in person and online.
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PUBLIC & PARTICIPATORY
Cultural & Immersive Experiences
Installations and participatory experiences that bring people living with dementia back into cultural life. Not illustrations of the work. The work itself, at cultural scale.
EXPLORE A COLLABORATION →
The invitation begins here.
Wherever you are, there is a place to start. Whether you are a family sensing that something important needs to be held before it becomes harder to hold. A care organisation ready to ask what your spaces and language are actually communicating. A cultural institution wondering who is missing from your work. Or a community that has quietly stopped extending the invitation and wants to change that.
SENSTORIA
New York
The Americas & Europe