Designing Acceptable Assisted Living Services for Elderly Users (original) (raw)
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Technologies
The purpose of this study is to identify and validate the requirements for new technology supporting wellness, independence and social participation for older people domiciled in residential homes and/or assisted-living communities. Method: This research adopts a stakeholder evaluation approach to requirements elicitation and user interface design. Specifically, the study design combines several qualitative human-machine interaction (HMI) design frameworks/methods, including realist ethnography, scenario-based design, persona-based design, and participatory design. Findings: New technology should reflect positive values around ageing and link to psychosocial models of successful ageing, and biopsychosocial models of health and wellbeing. Resident autonomy, wellness and social participation cannot be conceptualized outside an understanding of the relationships older adults have with others. The design remit for this technology is to enable a resident experience that is similar to living at home. New technologies should facilitate wellness and communication/connection, and not simply risk assessment. New technology provides an opportunity to bridge existing information gaps between care planning, care assessments and daily care. Overall this technology needs to be intuitive and uphold the resident's dignity and rights. Person-to-person interaction is central to care delivery. The introduction of new technology should enhance this interaction, and not threaten it. Conclusions: Future assisted-living (AL) technology should be premised by biopsychosocial models of wellness and support relationships between older adults and members of the personal and professional community. New assisted-living technology affords the possibility for improved social relationships, enhanced wellbeing, better quality of care, and independence. Such technologies require careful consideration in relation to adapting to age/condition and managing issues pertaining to resident consent, privacy and human contact.
2017
This paper reports on human factors research concerning the development of new technology enabling older people to lead meaningful and independent lives in a residential home and/or assisted living community. A key goal of the technology is to support a vision of care where older people are socially engaged and have continuity in living experience. This research adopts a stakeholder evaluation/participatory approach to requirements elicitation and user interface design. The emphasis is on understanding the context and meaning of experience and associated technology need. Specifically, the technology is defined from the perspective of addressing and achieving key stakeholder states/benefits associated with well-being, successful ageing, and relationship centred care. Primarily, the focus of this paper is on reporting field research findings relating to resident need and the technology solution.
Ambient Assisted Living: Benefits and Barriers From a User-Centered Perspective
Older adults have a growing desire to remain independent and age in their own home environment. Policy makers support this wish, as the quality and quantity of institutional care cannot be guaranteed with the present health care budget. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies can meet the interests of both parties, by facilitating healthy and active aging in the home environment. However, those technologies are still in their infancy and the likelihood of their adoption remains uncertain. By conducting a literature study and a user-requirement study for a conceptual AAL application called SONOPA (Social Networks for Older Adults to Promote an Active Life), benefits and barriers to the adoption of AAL technologies, as perceived by the elderly user, were identified. The user-requirement study consisted of focus groups and interviews with older adults and elder care professionals, conducted in the UK, France and Belgium. Together, the literature study and the user-requirement study led to several design guidelines which direct the future development process of SONOPA and related AAL applications.
Following a user-centred approach, twenty-three older people participated in individual structured interviews. These aimed at identifying end-users' needs and requirements to feed the specifications of the ubiquitous care system to support older peoples' independent living, CONFIDENCE. Five types of user needs to guide the design process were obtained. Health and ageing effects are important factors to consider whilst designing care systems for all. Physical impairments affect people's ability to interact with technical systems. Use and attitudes towards technology describe the potential ability of the end-users to operate existing technologies, and whether they are willing or not to learn and utilise the system. The system should work anytime and anywhere, i.e., it should be ubiquitous. The results suggested that older people live active lives, but fears and barriers exist which might restrict them. It is important that CONFIDENCE is able to support older people whether they are at home, at the country cottage or visiting friends. We consider taking into account the point of view of the end-users to be an important step. Other important features of CONFIDENCE include: immediate operation in the case of sudden problems; and being otherwise unnoticeable.
2010
AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) aims to extend the time elderly can live in their home environment by assisting them in carrying out activities of daily living (ADLs). Designers of AAL must not only consider the needs and problems that elders face when carrying out their ADLs, but that elders are characterized by presenting a natural cognitive decline, their attention levels are diminished and that they may consider that new technologies are complex to use. Considering these characteristics of elders, we propose Ambient Information Systems (AIS) as the appropriate technology to assist elders, since they are aesthetically pleasing applications which provide users with abstract representations of valued information. The aim of this work was to identify the design issues that should be addressed for developing AIS that effectively assist elderly with their ADLs. To reach this end, we designed mobile and embedded AIS that help elderly to manage their medication, since it is one of the critical ADLs for enabling "ageing in place". As a result of designing AIS, we identified a set of design attributes that were validated and extended through inspection evaluations with Computer Science and Health professionals.
A User-Driven Approach to Developing Ambient Assisted Living Systems for Older People
Intelligent Technologies for Bridging the Grey Digital Divide
This chapter describes some of the results of the EU-funded SOPRANO project to develop an Ambient Assisted Living system to promote active ageing and ageing-in-place. The chapter outlines SOPRANO‘s experience and application research approach to ensure that end-users are involved in all stages of the research and development. A number of key areas for application development were identified and developed as a set of use cases (or descriptive models), for example for medication reminding, and to support exercise. These use cases were further refined through visualization and iterative prototyping techniques with end-users to ensure usability, usefulness and acceptability for users. The SOPRANO prototype system is described together with future plans for deployment in demonstration sites and field trials.
User Requirements for Inclusive Technology for Older Adults
International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
Active aging technologies are increasingly designed to support an active lifestyle. However, the way in which they are designed can raise different barriers to acceptance of and use by older adults. Their designers can adopt a negative stereotype of aging. Thorough understanding of user requirements is central to this problem. This paper investigates user requirements for technologies that encourage an active lifestyle and provide older people with the means to self-manage their physical, mental, and emotional health. This requires consideration of the person and the sociotechnical context of use. We describe our work in collecting and analyzing older adults' requirements for a technology which enables an active lifestyle. The main contribution of the paper is a model of user requirements for inclusive technology for older people.
An End-User Perspective on the Cami Ambient and Assisted Living Project
INTED Proceedings, 2018
In this paper, we present the outcomes and conclusions obtained by involving seniors from three countries (Denmark, Poland and Romania) in an innovative project funded under the European Ambient Assisted Living (ALL) program. CAMI stands for "Companion with Autonomously Mobile Interface" in "Artificially intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL". The CAMI solution enables flexible, scalable and individualised services that support elderly to self-manage their daily life and prolong their involvement in the society (sharing knowledge, continue working, etc). This also allows their informal caregivers (family and friends) to continue working and participating in society while caring for their loved ones. The solution is designed as an innovative architecture that allows for individualized, intelligent self-management which can be tailored to an individual's preferences and needs. A user-centred approach has ranked health monitoring, computer supervised physical exercises and voice based interaction among the top favoured CAMI functionalities. Respondents from three countries (Poland, Romania and Denmark) participated in a multinational survey and a conjoint analysis study.
Design considerations for elderly users in domestic pervasive environments
HCI and Older Population, 2004
This short paper examines some of the issues within the design of domestic pervasive systems for the elderly and offers an insight into some of the considerations that need to be examined when installing/developing domestic pervasive systems for this client group. This paper arises from research currently being carried out at Loughborough University. The research is aimed at providing services for elderly users in pervasive domestic settings.