This paper describes a semi-automated web-based system to facilitate digital reminiscence therapy for patients with mild-to-moderate dementia, enacted in a group setting. The system, REMPAD, uses proactive recommendation technology to profile participants and groups, and offers interactive multimedia content from the Internet to match these profiles. In this paper, we focus on the design of the system to deliver an innovative personalized group reminiscence experience. We take a user-centered design approach to discover and address the design challenges and considerations. A combination of methodologies is used throughout this research study, including exploratory interviews, prototype use case walkthroughs, and field evaluations. The results of the field evaluation indicate high user satisfaction when using the system, and strong tendency towards repeated use in future. These studies provide an insight into the current practices and challenges of group reminiscence therapy, and inform the design of a multimedia recommender system to support facilitators and group therapy participants. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.