The Teletalker – A Design Researcher’s Tool to Explore Intergenerational Online Video Connectivity in-the-Wild (original) (raw)
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Teletalker: An online window to connect older adults
Gerontechnology, 2012
Although a fair amount of research around older adults' perception of digital technology exists, there is only a moderate amount of research investigating older people's reactions and sense-making in real-world contexts with emerging digital tools. This paper reports on the constructivist research approach used by the author, which initiated co-production with participants to gather older and younger adults' reactions towards digital video connectivity during a series of design research interventions. For this, the author had built a research tool, the Teletalker kiosks (TT), which connected two locations using digital live video to provide a 'window into the other space'. Participants, if they wished, could activate the volume with a designed mechanism aimed at non-computer literate people, which was used in order to speak to each other. The three connections were between an older people's charity day centre and the university, between two locations at the university, and between two-day centres in the U.K. The returns collected revealed overall positive reactions towards video connectivity by younger adults and mixed reactions by older adults. The design for the volume mechanism did not work as expected for both groups. The interventions also brought out opinions and conformity dynamics within groups of older adults and attitudes by younger audiences towards older people. More research is needed to understand these reactions and attitudes in comparable contexts.
Making online Face-to-Face interaction easier for older people with constructive design research
This paper reports early findings of employing constructive design research in order to make online social interaction easier for older people. In the western world the majority of computer illiterate people are older people. After investigating which forms of online social interaction present the most obvious benefits for communication, it was decided to focus on making online face-to-face communication more accessible and easier for older people. For this the Teletalker, an installation with two online video kiosks connecting two places audio-visually and where a simple hand sensor operates the sound, was built. Field research was conducted with the Teletalker connecting the communal room of Age UK Barnet, London with London’s Middlesex University’s entrance hall. Constructive design research allowed making the idea tangible in order to collect feedback, to assess impact on its environment and to generate a discourse on the preferred state.
Technological Forecasting & Social Change: Special Issue on STS and Later Life (Online First; In print)
This article discusses how the elderly experience their ICT usage as the ageing citizens of the Finnish information society. Through reflexive ethnographic analysis the human-(non-)human boundary-making and temporalities are analyzed from the “ICT biographies” of sixteen interviewees. The perspectives of ageing as lived experience and as socio-cultural phenomenon; and the socio-materiality entangled with temporal layers; are combined to understand the intra-action between the ageing ICT users and technology. The social relations are discussed as essential part of this intra-action: the interviewees perceive themselves as slow and clumsy ICT users in relation to younger “generations”, for example. In the human-machine boundary making the interviewees’ previous experiences on communication technologies are significant. As an addition to previous studies on ICT and ageing, this article further discusses the benefits of ethnographic study on existing ICT practices for urban computing design. What could be learnt from these practices in relation to, for example, technology usage in private and public places, negative and positive experiences, motivations and needs of ageing citizens? Or how could design benefit from understanding ageing as lived experience which however reflects the social discourses about ageing and technology, as well as the socio-cultural environment ageing adults live in.
Gerontechnology, 2022
Background: Engaging older users in co-design processes has become increasingly desirable in the approach to develop and test technologies suitable for them and according to their needs. This analysis draws on the involvement of older adults aged 65 and over in Israel in co-design activities while developing a smartphone and smart-television application (App) called 'Age TechCare' designed to record and prevent falls. Objective: This article builds upon conceptual and theoretical work regarding codesign and the co-constitution of aging and technology (CAT-model) and value co-creation (Service-Dominant Logic) to offer an interpretive framework that contributes to our understanding of the dynamic relations between aging and technology that come about during co-design interactions. Based on the interdisciplinary approach, we propose an interpretive framework for understanding the context in which older users discuss, use, and imagine technology as well as their needs and routines: understanding the context of the problem and then re-contextualizing and de-contextualizing it as an interpretive framework that enables co-designing a valuable App for users within their service network. Method: The research was conducted using discussions in four focus groups: three focus groups with older users aged 62 years and over (n=36), and one focus group with health care professionals who are Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) from the users' service network (n=8). Through group interactions and discussions, we were able to underline the interactive and shared experience of falls as a contextualized experience. Results: These interactions have empirical and theoretical importance, specifically in the ways by which older users make sense of their lived experiences and the aging process while using and designing technology. When designing innovations for older adult users, it is not sufficient to assess only their expressed problems and needs in co-design procedures and workshops. These assume that aging problems and needs exist in advance, with no relation to the technology being discussed in the workshop. It is also important to enable the users to rediscover their new (real or imagined) roles as older people. This means that users rediscover their aging process as well as technology while interacting in a co-design process. Taking a phenomenological and anthropological perspective, while talking with older users in co-design processes, the processes of aging, technology, and their interrelations come about and innovate. Conclusion: This analysis draws on focus group dynamics carried out while identifying the context and then re-and de-contextualizing as design methods. By these means, the users become co-creators of value and influence both design and function of the App by being test persons and by improving new ideas and value offerings within the service network.
Older Adults’ Experiences with Technology: Learning from Their Voices
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2013
When developing technologies for older adults, it is important to have them involved in the design process to identify needs, expectations and requirements correctly and comprehensively. However, communication gaps often exist, which call for the need to have continuous relationships with the target segment. In this study, older adults who have previously participated in a home technology study are interviewed to comfortably talk about their thoughts and experiences. User comments on various technologies are analyzed in relation to various stages of technology use. This paper discusses design implications, as well as topics for future research. The study can be expected to contribute to setting strategic design goals.
Inclusion of Older Adults in the Research and Design of Digital Technology
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Digital technology holds a promise to improve older adults’ well-being and promote ageing in place. However, there seems to be a discrepancy between digital technologies that are developed and what older adults actually want and need. Ageing is stereotypically framed as a problem needed to be fixed, and older adults are considered to be frail and incompetent. Not surprisingly, many of the technologies developed for the use of older adults focus on care. The exclusion of older adults from the research and design of digital technology is often based on such negative stereotypes. In this opinion article, we argue that the inclusion rather than exclusion of older adults in the design process and research of digital technology is essential if technology is to fulfill the promise of improving well-being. We emphasize why this is important while also providing guidelines, evidence from the literature, and examples on how to do so. We unequivocally state that designers and researchers shoul...
In this paper we discuss preliminary findings from the first stage of our SEEDS study (SEEDS: An Organic Approach to Virtual Participatory Design), a collaborative research project between Universities of Dundee, Kent and Leeds, United Kingdom. This feasibility study investigates how to motivate older people to engage with digital technology, as well as how to improve understanding of older people’s needs and requirements amongst young designers. As part of this study we recorded interviews with older people which investigated their motivations to use or not use digital technologies and themes pertaining to their (dis)engagement. A virtual repository was created to make collected interviews, which were presented as social stories, available to engineering, technology and design students. In this paper we discuss the findings from a prototyping exercise with undergraduate and postgraduate students which took place in stage one at the Universities of Kent and Leeds.
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Drawing from a conceptual framework that problematises and redefines the digital lives of older people aged 65 years and over, this panel explores how older people engage with digital communication tools and skills, and the way this plays out in their everyday lives. Each paper situates older people as experiencing a rich social life integrated with digital technologies and understood in terms of multi-faceted disparities in internet use, skills and modes of digital participation. How older people’s digital lives are negotiated and developed, and the particular frustrations and barriers to their digital participation, are situated as particular to their cultural context for use of communication tools. This panel thus contributes new understanding of how older people’s digital lives are emerging, moving away from simplistic descriptions of skills, to the multi-faceted and complex negotiations occurring when older people make decisions about connecting with digital tools.