Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Social Media, Games and Assistive Environments

This paper presents the methods and approaches used in the process of branding an online community for older adults, by actively involving them in its development. It starts by presenting a synthesis of the literature available on the naming and branding processes, the older adults’ characteristics, and relevant participatory design methods used. Then, it presents the participatory branding process, mainly supported by a focus group workshop held with 10 older adults aged 50 and over. The participation of the older adults allowed us to embed their values and identity into the generation of a more familiar brand name, positive values and clearer messaging. Although additional testing with different focus groups is required (e.g. other age range, different ICT skills, or literacy), the results imply that the brand resonates with the target audience.

Social representations stem from wider processes of socialization within which the media perform a simultaneously reflective and co-constitutive role. Embedded in society, mainstream media discourses tend to legitimize and convey social representations in line with hegemonic ideologies. By doing so, mainstream media shed light on what are considered to be valid representations and roles and render invisible those which are not hegemonic and, hence, dismissed as less important or actively invisibilized. As European democratic societies are becoming increasingly older and gender equal, it would be expected for mainstream media to go in line with these trends, giving increasing visibility to seniors and to both women and non-hegemonic representations of what it means to be a man. This paper intends to explore whether media representations go on par with this course. To put it forward, this paper will identify how media are representing men and aging in Germany and Portugal through a quantitative content analysis of four national weekly news magazines.

It is now commonsense in the professional marketing sphere to say that senior population is the next biggest market to come. Not only regarding retirement or nursing homes which are quite common due to a longer span of life but also because, in occidental countries, of the baby boomers reaching seniorhood and, in other countries of specific demography that implies an aging population like in Japan.This paper intends to question what we could call a paradox, especially flagrant in France, regarding what the French government promotes as the silver economy. In Fact, even if the marketing and communications professionals are aware of the kind of treasure these older generations represent regarding their consumption habits, they act slowly or undercover when it comes to addressing older people.Through a semio-communicational analysis of papers coming from the professional marketing press (on and offline), we will see how this side of the question is quite talkative about older people, their mastering of consumption and their everyday use of new media in this respect. At the same time, the same kind of analysis of dedicated websites, Social media brand pages or social media senior influencer, mostly women will demonstrate how slowly senior seen as consumers are rising on the French web. We will question how this can be linked to brand communications addressing the main population in order to reach baby boomers senior.

Digital practices in later life are not yet well understood. Therefore, this paper discusses the framework for a research design project that aims at tracing differences and similarities in how older adults use their smartphones in circumstances in and outside their homes in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The research questions of this international research project focus on the extent to which digital mobile practices relate to perceived social connectedness among older adults aged 55–79 years old. While studies have shown that the subjective experience of ‘being connected’ supports continued wellbeing in later life, there remains an insufficient understanding of the processes through which digital mediated social interaction is effective for social connectedness. The analytical framework of the project prioritizes the co-constituency of (digital) technology and ageing, and takes digital practices in everyday life as its entry point. The main data collection tool will be the tracking of smartphone activity of 600 older adults (150 per country) during four weeks. An online survey and qualitative interviews will gather data about the meanings of the quantified digital practices, and how they shape (if they do) the participants’ connection to the world. This approach will allow us not only to get insight into what older adults say how they used their smartphone but also to gain insight into their real-life daily use. The assessment of the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of the methods contributes towards an accurate and appropriate interpretation of empirical results and their implications.

With the technology affordance of “blocking” function provided by the WeChat platform, users can have some autonomy to choose which updates can be seen by others. In everyday life information practices of social media, young adults often block their parents on WeChat Moments due to various reasons. However, the blocking behavior hinders intergenerational communication between parents and children, and may cause more misunderstandings and alienation. In this paper, semi-structured interviews are conducted with thirteen young adults between 20 to 30 years of age, exploring factors that impact blocking behaviors in young adults. According to the findings, three kinds of blocking behaviors by young people on WeChat moments are identified, and four reasons that cause blocking behaviors are also presented.

The convenience of online shopping has an important impact on the change of shopping ways for the elderly. This study is based on the decline of cognitive ability of the elderly and the neglect of their shopping experience needs of the elderly in the interactive design of shopping websites. The aim of the study is to improve the experience of the elderly, and the speed of discovery browsing speed and reduce fatigue for them. In this study, 10 volunteers aged 60–65 were selected as the subjects to conduct visual flow analysis on the home pages of three shopping websites under the condition of undifferentiated testing. Participants were interviewed in depth and accessible data were collected for further analysis. The result is to discover the visual commonness of the old people’s observation website, summarize the inconvenience of the interaction of shopping website, and put forward the application normative suggestions for three levels (information architecture, interaction framework and visualization framework). The contribution of the results will be helpful to the design of shopping websites for the elderly in the future, starting from the user experience and adapting to the psychological and physiological features of the elderly.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between users’ visual behavior and their conformity during online shopping. An experiment was conducted in which 30 young adults were asked to browse commodities differing in the number of sales and to make a purchase decision. Participants’ fixation time on the commodity and the number of sales were recorded, and their conformity was measured through questionnaires. The results showed that the higher the sales, the longer the participants’ fixation time on the commodity. Furthermore, the longer the fixation time, the stronger the conformity of the participants. That is, the conformity effect was observed when limited information was provided during online shopping.

Health rumor promises to resolve uncertainty or provide new insight into important health-related phenomena. Older adults who are more concerned about health issues are plagued by the health rumors more seriously. Why do older people prefer to share health rumors and how to protect the elderly from online health rumors are becoming a new public health concern. This study attempts to understand the health information behavior of the elderly from the perspective of socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), and to find out the possible relationship between health information literacy and health rumor sharing intention of the older adults. The results showed that health information literacy and knowledge acquisition goal were negatively related to the intention to share health rumors while emotion regulation goal had a positive influence on it. Interaction effects were also significant between the independent variables and the dependent variable. In the process of aging, the competition between knowledge acquisition goal and emotion regulation goal will play an important role in the information behaviors of individuals. Health information literacy not only helps the older adults to identify health rumors to avoid spreading them but also guides the elderly to avoid deception of false information and make incorrect health decisions.

With the advancement of ICTs, older adults are more actively participating in their healthcare decisions and accessing online health information. However, older adults demonstrated low levels of health literacy which calls for various interventions to improve. Given the limited accessibility and mixed results of public intervention programs, intergenerational communication/learning has been proposed as a cost-effective solution. While intergenerational communication/learning often became problematic even within family. Therefore, it is far from conclusive to employ intergenerational communication/learning to improve older adults’ health literacy. To address these concerns, this study adopted semi-structured interviews to explore older adults’ perceptions on their online health information seeking and sharing behaviors and on their adult children’s responses. We found that older adults preferred the WeChat to seek and share everyday health information. Compared to older adults’ actively involvement, adult children provided inactive or even negative responses to the sharing behaviors. Our results revealed that two miscommunications occurred in the intergenerational communication contributed to forming the problematic communication and incomplete comprehension. Implications for both theory and practice were discussed as well.

Video game-based interventions have been increasingly explored as a means to prevent or reverse age-related declines in attention, executive control, memory, and processing speed. Further, the gamification of interventions aimed at improving mental and physical health, and encouraging healthy behaviors, holds promise with respect to promoting intervention engagement and adherence. Successful implementation of game-based and gamified interventions depends on the ability to design games that older adults are willing and able to play, which ultimately depends on understanding the game preferences of older adults, and the challenges and barriers to video gameplay. To explore these issues, this paper presents data collected from U.S. participants as part of the Intervention Comparative Effectiveness for Adult Cognitive Training (ICE-ACT) clinical trial. This trial aimed to understand the impact of various interventions on cognition and everyday task performance. Three intervention arms involved video game play: BrainHQ training (gamified cognitive training), Rise of Nations training (commercial complex real-time strategy game), and a control group that played Sudoku, crossword, and word search computer programs. After each game session, participants rated their game experience and provided comments in a game diary. This paper presents analyses of these diary data. The largest differences observed were between attitudes toward the control games and Rise of Nations. Control games were strongly preferred and were perceived as more motivating compared to Rise of Nations, and there was a trend for Rise of Nations to be perceived as more frustrating than BrainHQ. The observed preference for puzzle games, and an aversion for the violent and complex content of Rise Nations, is consistent with previous survey and focus group data of older adults’ game preferences. Results have implications for designing game-based and gamified interventions for older adults that will encourage enjoyment, engagement, and adherence.

We investigate the combination of a drinking gadget with Serious Games, designed to entice elderly/dementia patients to drink more water - with potential benefit for both, the elderlies and their caregivers. We present several strategies that are essential towards developing a Combined Evaluation Process needed to determine user acceptance. We report on a pilot study conducted in a retirement home with dementia patients. The goal was to gain first insights regarding the acceptance of such a technology from the viewpoint of the elderly and their caregivers.

Toys are partners that accompany children’s growth and are indispensables that comfort children and promote their mental development. Since babies’ physiology and psychology experience rapid development in babyhood (0–18 months). From the perspective of toy design and intellectual education, how to provide appropriate toys for stimulation according to perception and motor development is very important. However, it can be seen from the current toy design practice that most relevant design studies are only for school-age children; there are few studies on baby toy design. The objectives of this study are to ensure that baby toy design is based on academic and theoretical basis and make the design more rigorous to have more positive value to the physical and mental development of babies. Therefore, this study takes intelligent toy design as the viewpoint to conduct study on homologous visual and auditory human factors in babyhood and provide relevant data on human factor to achieve useful and effective design. Since the babies in this study are not yet mature in mind and body, there are a lot of limitations compared with general study objects. Therefore, this study adopts document analysis and expert interviews to study on human factors for baby toy design. The results obtained the following data on babyhood: (1) physical development process at different stages; (2) features of visual ability development at different stages; (3) features of auditory ability development at different stages; and (4) policies and suggestions for toy design for different stages.

It has been well established that social engagement is an important component of positive aging, yet little is known about whether and in what forms digital games can provide social benefits. This paper addresses this issue by discussing research we have conducted during the past four years. The research question addressed in this paper is: Can playing digital games provide social benefits to older adults? To address this question, we provide overviews of four of our research studies that have investigated the social aspects of playing digital games. These are: (1) a face-to-face survey of 463 older adults in Canada who play digital games; (2) an eight-week Wii Bowling tournament involving 73 older adults from 14 long-term care facilities; (3) a four-week Bingo ‘frame game’ study involving 50 older adults in long-term care facilities; and (4) an online survey of 176 older adults who play the Internet game entitled World of Warcraft. The findings of these four research studies are encouraging as we found social benefits in each study. Although many older adults play digital games, a minority play games with others. These findings suggest that promotion and education would be helpful to encourage and support older adults to play digital games with others to gain the social benefits.

Gamification strategies were utilized as persuasive designs for promoting physical activities in recent years. However, the “one-size-fits-all” design approach cannot be employed effectively to convince all users to engage in targeted behaviors. Consequently, personalized gamified interactions which require an adaptation of gameful experiences to the user’s preferences were applied to drive users more effectively. The aim of this study was to investigate the gamer types among the seniors, and which gamification strategies are affected by the same gamer types, thereby engaging in more physical activities. We conducted an online questionnaire to investigate the gamer types of seniors. Based on the results, seniors can be divided into three categories of gamers: Easygoing, Socializer and Achiever. For the Easygoing, they showed little preference for gamification strategies and were more difficult to drive by specific strategies. The Socializer tends to be driven by socially oriented gamification strategies, but disliked punishment in games. Furthermore, the Achiever preferred to pursue personal achievements rather than interacting with others in games. The findings of this study contribute to HCI Community with the preliminary investigations on the gamer types of seniors, arriving at a better understanding of how persuasive technology can be designed to meet the needs of seniors.

While small and large technological miracles have undoubtedly made our lives easier, they have potentially also made a significant part of our daily social routine obsolete. People live in the same space but rarely spend quality time together, interacting and bonding. One of the solutions to enhance family relationships may lie in the technology itself—video games. Previous research having shown the sociability of video games, and in this study, we examined their potential in creating closer family relationships, especially among different generations. Participants (n = 183) were asked to play video games together over a period of six weeks. Participants completed a modified version of the self-disclosure and relationship closeness inventories before and after the treatment and responded to a series of open-ended questions post-treatment. Results indicate an increase in breadth and depth of self-disclosure, and in relationship closeness in both younger and older adults. Gathering around a novel shared activity, both younger and older adults found new ways of connecting to their family members, whether through more frequent conversations, broader selection of topics, shared subjects, or pure entertainment. The findings suggest that video games can provide a platform for family communication, resulting in the rejuvenation and maintenance of intergenerational relationships.

We present the design process and evaluation of a pervasive, location-based mobile game created to act as an experiment system and allow evaluation of how different design elements can influence player behaviour, using social interaction as a study case. A feasibility study with a group of community dwelling elderly volunteers from the city of Kyoto, Japan, was performed to evaluate the system. Results showed that the choice of theme and overall design of game was adequate, and that elderly people could understand the game rules and their goals while playing. Points of improvement included reducing the complexity of game controls and changing social interaction mechanics to account for situations when there are only a few players active or players are too far apart.

It is well acknowledged that engaging in physical exercise is important to live a longer healthier life. In this context, dance is an especially interesting activity that may hold much potential in an ageing society. Dance combines the essence for successful ageing in a panoply of benefits that range from the physical to the cognitive and psychosocial. To be able to engage in dancing activities from home can then be a valuable add on to people’s health, wellbeing and quality of life; this paves the way for technology-mediated dance activities at home. This paper reviews the research in this area, to develop an understanding of currently available technologies and to provide researchers and practitioners alike with an overview of how the technologies reviewed can address the specific characteristics of dance.

The development of Augmented Reality head-mounted displays for the commercial market offers new application possibilities in combination with exercise therapy. Patients who are medically advised to exercise regularly, such as hypertensive patients, could increase adherence through gamification elements combined with immersive projections in their real-world environment. Furthermore, different vital data could be displayed during their training. In order to determine the needs and preferences for an exergame for elderly hypertensive patients we conducted a requirements analysis through semi-structured interviews in older adults (n = 11) over 65 years with diagnosed essential hypertension. The data collected was analyzed through a summarizing content analysis. The requirements analysis revealed mandatory requirements in the areas of: overall system, hardware, software, gamification and monitoring. The results indicate that these potential users of an AR exergame, who are vulnerable target group, must be considered separately from others in terms of additional factors such as comorbidities, danger of falling or acceptance of technology.

Digital games are frequently described as media that can be crucial in strengthening relationships, enhancing cognitive skills and providing social support. Although considerable empirical research on the use of digital games in youth and stereotypes on gender or ethnicity has been widely covered, there have been few studies on age stereotyping in the game context. In addition, this type of stereotype – game-ageism is likely to negatively affect age identity and intergroup communication amongst players, which could hinder to bridge the gap between different generations. Drawn on a literature review, this position paper introduces the concept of game-ageism as an age stereotype that is still set in our game culture. It also seeks to remedy this problem by suggesting an opposite ideological movement – age-gameism that refers to widening the audience of the game industry to all ages. In general, this paper offers a contribution in the field of media and society by highlighting the need for developing games for all ages, encouraging a positive age identity, enhancing intergroup communication and a heterogeneous game culture.

With the development of technology and new devices, online games have attracted more and more older adults. Exploring chances and challenges of the elder players become an important issue in the game industry. First of all, older adults have a lot of accesses to reach a new game, but it is unclear which way is the most effective one. Secondly, although adequate game playing is good for elders’ mental and physical conditions, game addiction is not. It is emergent to distinguish between the attractive and addictive factors of online games on older adults, and find a balance between them. A semi-structure interview is employed in this study. We analyze the qualitative data from four themes: older adults’ access to online games, factors that attract older adults to play online games, factors that lead to older adults’ addiction in online games, game design features that alleviate game addiction for older adults. This research is among the first to distinguish the attractive and addictive factors on elder game players, as well as provide practical implications for game company and designers.

This study explored the impact of intergenerational play on young people’s perceptions towards old adults. It analyzed how intergenerational play is associated with the three factors of ageism (i.e., antilocution, discrimination, and avoidance). To address the research question, seven research hypotheses were proposed. A total of 150 young people aged between 15 and 30 completed an online survey. To test the research hypotheses and determine the amount of variance in ageism attributable to gender and education level, a series of two-stage hierarchical regression analyses were carried out. The results of regression analyses revealed that the frequency of playing with parents and grandparents and the frequency of playing either against or collaboratively with old family members is not significantly associated with ageism. However, expecting to play with old family members, the quality of intergenerational play, the sense of closeness to old family members due to gameplay, and the enjoyment of playing with old family members were positively associated with young people’s perceptions towards old adults. The findings indicate that young people’s perceptions towards old adults are strongly associated with the quality and enjoyment of gameplay with old family members rather than the quantity of gameplay.

With entertaining game graphics and tasks, exergames can provide benefits for older adults to effectively exercise their physical and mental capabilities. However, it is sometimes difficult for exergames to engage older adults due to maladaptation. In this work, we suggest that the feeling of familiarity can positively influence older adult’s adaptation to exergames. Based on this intuition, to help exercise older adult’s upper limbs, we design a Ping Pong Exergame (PPE) infused with table tennis activities, which has been shown to be one of the most popular (thus familiar) sports among Singaporean older adults. A five-week study involving 44 Singaporean older adults shows that the participants who have higher levels of familiarity to table tennis exhibit higher motivation and ability in playing PPE, which indicate that familiarity can improve older adults’ adaptation to exergames.

Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies have the capacity to provide a safe environment for elderly people and to monitor and analyse gathered data which have been proven to be valuable in detecting activities that underpin health decline. Although there is a growing interest for these technologies, older people face some difficulties interacting with the technology. In an AAL environment, the interaction problem due to changes in perceptual and motor skill capabilities that often accompany the aging process in elderly people is further complicated as the immense quantity of sensors, with varying user interface and user interaction, makes full interoperability difficult. As elderly people navigate through this environment, they should be able to discover, configure, and directly interact with a myriad smart objects and digital information delivered to them. To increase the uptake of these technologies, there is a need for an intuitive interaction technique that considers elderly people’s personal profile and presents contextual information when needed. In this paper, we present an interaction design research which aims to explore opportunities and challenges inherent to the development of an Assistive Technology (AT) for elderly people. The proposed AT, which is a combination of Mixed Reality (MR) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, aims to improve the Quality of Life (QoL) and to maintain the self-independence of people aged 65 or above. The intended users are elderly people, their family, their closest friends, and their healthcare network. The main contribution of this project is to provide a set of interaction design principles for combining MR and IoT as an AT. This is achieved by a carefully planned participatory design approach. The benefits and drawbacks of each phase are discussed transparently to inform current practices which are still mostly technology driven.

The types and levels of autonomy have been deeply discussed and, in some cases, standardized in the areas of human robot interaction, autonomous vehicles, and spaceflight vehicles. However, there is not an established framework for in-home technologies, which is a growing area of technological development. Home technologies have had significant effects on how people live, especially improving the ways in which older adults and their caregivers navigate various daily tasks. Having a framework to define the types and levels of automation in home technologies is necessary to better understand the state of the art, identify current and future directions for development, and facilitate communication between stakeholders. This paper reviews existing studies on smart home technologies and previous efforts around building taxonomies of automation in different domains. Literature around technology adoption among older adults and related design considerations are also discussed to further describe home automation as it applies to improving independence among older adults.

In Japan, which has the highest aging rate in the world, demand for long-term care (LTC) is rapidly increasing. However, the labor force is decreasing nationwide, and in particular the shortage of staff for LTC services is a serious problem. Japanese government aims to reduce the burden on staff at old people’s homes and improve the quality of LTC services by introducing ICT/IoT. The organizational culture in old people’s homes is the basis of the quality of LTC services; hence, we aimed to visualize it. For the purposes of this research, organizational culture is divided into the following eight domains: “teamwork,” “information sharing,” “morale,” “professional growth,” “common values,” “resource allocation prioritization,” “responsibility and authority,” and “improvement orientation.” A questionnaire survey on organizational culture was administered to 366 staffs in 23 old people’s homes and 4053 staffs in 4 hospitals. The response rates were 71.9% and 82.0%, respectively. The results revealed that old people’s homes have higher scores compared to hospitals on teamwork, information sharing, and organizational values, and that old people’s homes have problems in securing and fostering middle managers. It was suggested that effectively introducing ICT/IoT could enhance the organizational culture and increase the job satisfaction.

This manuscript discusses a new indoor positioning method called a fingerprinting trilateration method or FTM using BLE beacons. The strength of BLE signals, referred to as received signal strength indicators or RSSI, decrease as they travel through space. FTM employs a list of fingerprints of RSSIs and performs trilateration between the three closest fingerprints to locate a receiver’s current position. An experiment in positioning performance is conducted in comparison with a traditional method of fingerprinting and the result shows that FTM could locate the current position with a positioning error of 0.615 m while it is 1.162 m for fingerprinting using a Between-points condition.

This social theory and philosophy-oriented paper offers a framework to analyze changes in the logics of care, and their connections to robots in healthcare. If care can be historically understood as a gift given to one another and given back in return, in many post-industrial societies care has been separated from the sphere of family to an independent area of care labor, obscuring the idea of reciprocity commonly linked to care-as-gift. Correspondingly, the robots utilized in healthcare defy the idea of reciprocity yet more extremely. In care robotics social relations go only one way, adhering to the logic of the parasite. Starting with a discussion of the theories of care-as-gift, the paper argues that the logic of the parasite has (partially) replaced the logic of gift in the organization of care. Furthermore, the human-computer interaction implied in the design of the social robot Paro are analyzed in more detail, elucidating the logic of the parasite in action.

Internet of Things (IoT) is highly expected to contribute in making elderly people’s quality of life better, especially by detecting early health risks and supporting livings. However, most elderly people are not friendly to IoT technologies, which is a barrier to implement IoT technologies into the elderly people’ livings. In this study, we designed a card-based age-friendly workshop to help elderly people being friendly and having confidence with IoT. The cards composed of 16 “trigger cards” and 14 “feedback cards” about several IoT devices, which reflects our degraded but age-friendly explanation of IoT that IoT devices give a “feedback” when a “trigger” happens. The participants were asked to come up with ideas for use cases of IoT by combining a trigger card with a feedback card. Within three workshops, 22 people of 65 years of age or older were recruited, and 134 ideas were totally obtained. We revealed that the ideas were categorized into nine groups based on the purpose of each use case. Moreover, survey results indicated that the elderlies became friendly with IoT through coming up with ideas in the workshop. In this study, we confirmed that carefully designed cards and example ideas can help participants bring out more ideas and higher confidence in IoT. Experiencing and imaging about the use of IoT in their own personal needs will encourage elderlies to use IoT technologies.

In recent years, the number of people who use online recipe services in order to cook has increased. It is difficult to match food taste to user’s preference because an online recipe page shows a recipe to realize just one taste even though there are countless numbers of recipes in an online recipe service. Our preliminary experiment using convenience food to investigate the user’s preference showed that the preference of almost participants differed from the taste of food cooked following the recipe printed in the package. It has also been reported that 76.5% of housewives are interested in cooking activities. However, using measuring spoon is difficult to use in order to determine the exact amount of seasonings. When we conducted a preliminary experiment to confirm the error between the input amount based on a rough estimation and the specific amount, the average error for small spoon was 46.2%, and the average error for large spoon was 31.8% even though the participants cook frequently. Especially, for an elderly person requiring low salt or low sugar, if the error becomes too big than appropriate amount, leading to endangering his life or losing the pleasures of eating. However, since there is no device currently in use that can assist in putting seasonings, a device other than measuring spoon is needed to determine the amount of seasoning for cooking. In this research, we aim to bring the taste of food with an online recipe close to the user’s preferable taste without burdening the user. In this paper, we propose a cooking support system which analyzes user’s preference from user’s feedback according to the five grade evaluation for each meal, adjusts the amount of seasoning for a recipe depending on user’s preference, and supports to add the seasoning by Smart Cruet equipped with motion sensors, LED light, and BLE communication interface. We conducted an experiment for 14 days to confirm how many days are needed to bring the adjustment of the seasonings close to the preferable taste for the user. We were able to reach the desired adjustment in 7 days. Furthermore, we found Smart Cruet could measure the adding amount of seasoning with 5.56% average error.

Due to a rising number of older population groups, there is a need to prolong an active life of elderly people, who are ready and want to lead active and quality life in a sense of their inclusion, socialization and independence. Especially, the independence in their everyday activities is crucial for them. In this process, assistive technology seems to play a promising role. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of assistive technology (AT) for active and independent aging, summarize its benefits and constraints for the elderly people, as well as describe its types. The methods include a method of literature search of available sources describing this issue in the world’s databases Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, and a method of comparison and evaluation of the findings of the selected studies on the research topic. The findings of all the detected studies confirmed that the use of AT had a positive impact on the enhancement of active and independent living of the elderly people. Most of the trials researched the effectiveness of AT on the enhancement of physical conditions of healthy older people, followed by social assistive robots, memory aid systems, or protection AT. Nevertheless, it is important to target all AT devices at meeting both the elderly people’s and their caregivers’ individual needs. Therefore, developers should tailor these technological devices to the needs of the elderly people, which can be achieved through multidisciplinary cooperation of all interested stakeholders such the end-users, their caregivers, developers, and possibly, doctors.

As older adults become active users of digital technologies, digital activity among this age group is increasingly associated with life stage factors. This paper discusses the understanding of life stage as explanatory factors in older adults’ digital engagement by exploring the association between life transitions and digital domestic practices in Finland. The study is based on an analysis of qualitative, in-person interview data from 20 participants between the ages of 50 and 78 who recently bought their own apartment in Western or Central Finland. The aims are to identify variances of life transitions in relation to domestic practices, investigate the association between life transitions and digital engagement at home, and evaluate the possibilities for incorporating digital domestic ecosystems into the daily lives of older adults. The study makes three main propositions: digital domestic practices are influenced by financial decision-making processes in households; life transitions and changes in social and personal relationships influence the emergence and creation of digital practices at home; and the appropriation of digital domestic ecosystems requires social and cultural changes regarding the desirability and accessibility of digital services. To this end, the study considers the extent to which the concept of life stages could be taken into consideration in the digital design of domestic practices among older people in Finland.

Social robots are gaining attention as potential tool for improving older adults’ social and emotional well-being. A mixed-method study with a panel of older adults 85 years of age and older explored how the oldest old feels about social robots, as well as new technologies in general. Based on responses to a survey and a set of focus groups, it was found that the panel was generally experienced and comfortable regarding use of new technologies. Responses to questions about social robots, however, suggested that there was a mix of perceptions and attitudes. Many participants were able to envision using one, open to interacting with one, and quick to embrace their potential benefits. On the other hand, apprehension to engaging with a social robot was apparent among some participants. Even with some concerns around trust, privacy and security, however, the group overall had no problem understanding the key capabilities and features of social robots, despite having very little to no prior knowledge. The findings indicate the oldest old, although often stereotyped to be slow to accept new technologies, may be open to the possibility of using a social robot as a companion.

In recent years, urban soundscape research, from the typical urban imagery and self-explanatory discussion, infiltrated into the sound field characteristics of the neighborhood street in the pedestrian street space, and explored the perception of the overall urban environment and situation shaping. Urban soundscape description and psychological evaluation are multi-directional and interactive effects. Considering the physical quantity and subjective psychological characteristics of sound energy, it is an important ink for the study of the sound field design of pedestrian streets. The research project focuses on the sound energy distribution of the night market pedestrian system and explores the multi-directionality through factors such as time, energy, space, and perception. The objective measurement results of the field average monitoring with the equivalent average sound level LAeq (dB) are used as the basic prototype of the sound field to draw the regional and acoustic energy distribution map.

Following current demographical trends, the aging population has emerged as a main target group for the development of assistive robots [16]. In current studies, assistive robots are seen as assistants, butlers or companion pets [2, 5]. These roles seem to assume an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic metaphor for the role of robots, acknowledging them intelligence and independence in performing daily tasks. In this paper we wish to reflect on the roles that assistive robots could play in elderly care, building on results gathered from a research through design investigation that we conducted as part of the SMOOTH (Seamless huMan-robot interactiOn fOr THe support of elderly people: www.smooth-robot.dk (Last seen 15/02/2019)) project. Our results suggest that the participants to our study seemed divided between understanding our robot as a tool but also as an intelligent being capable of social interaction. Therefore, we propose that assistive robots might be playing an ambiguous, evolving role in between that of a tool with a specific purpose and an intelligent being, like a pet, not equal and unthreatening to their human counterparts.

With this contribution we want to give insights into the development of a drinking gadget which is useable by the elderly and dementia patients with the goal to create an automated drinking protocol. Through the literature and available smart cups, we deduced important strategies for the design of a drinking aid. Our natural solution is integrated into the daily workflow, hence enables the caregivers to react to the needs of the elderly without additional burden. Therefore, we identified some key requirements for both user groups. Furthermore, we integrated aspects of expandability with software, a vision of rich interaction between user/gadget and focused on the convenience during the daily usage to reach the elderly and caregivers alike.

Voice-controlled in-home personal assistants have a great potential to assist older adults. This paper explores the aspects of a human-computer interface design, specifically a voice assistant, to help older adults manage their personal health, especially in the case of chronic health conditions. In our previous work, we have built a web interface for caregivers to monitor older adults’ health changes based on in-home sensor data from motion sensors, bed sensors and depth sensors. Data collected from these sensors are stored in servers and processed using several algorithms to obtain health and activity parameters including gait, motion patterns, sleep, heart rate, and respiration rate, as well as to generate health alerts. The sensor system with automated health alerts and care coordination has been shown to help seniors maintain better functionality. In our current research project, we focus on developing a consumer interface for older adults and their family members that can provide health information on-demand, based on spoken queries. The health information is presented as both audio and visual displays and uses graphical visualizations and linguistic summaries of the sensor data trends and changes. The goal is to present data in a form that is simple to understand. To accomplish our objective of creating an easy-to-use-and-understand health data interface for older adults, we explore voice-controlled, in-home personal assistants as a solution. Two voice assistant platforms with displays have been selected for implementation and testing, namely, the Amazon Echo Show and the Lenovo Smart Display with Google Assistant.

The design process of interactive systems is a multifaceted process that can lead to various forms of manifestations. Designers can draw on different interaction design styles to realize the intended, to-be designed interactive system and the corresponding HCI artifacts. This work identifies and investigates different interaction design styles based on concrete prototypes that have been designed, developed and evaluated in co-funded research project in the Active and Assisted Living domain. In total, the work presents 12 concrete prototypes which have been implemented between 2011 and 2018 and list 8 designable interaction design styles. The work lists identifies main characteristics and elaborates their relationships and dependencies which serve as basis for the future extensive research work that questions the impact of different interaction design styles on the targeted end users supposed to use the intended, to-be designed interactive system.

This study analyzed data from the SHARE study to compare the gait speed of older adults in European countries and China and to explore the association of gait speed with other physical abilities. Given that the motor development of children follows a cephalocaudal and proximodistal trend, the declining trend of older adults’ physical abilities was also analyzed. The results showed that, on average, older adults in China walked faster than older adults in European countries. Slower gait speed and weaker grip strength were observed for older adults with worse motor abilities. Furthermore, this study found that the decline in motor abilities of older adults accelerated with age. The participants’ lower-extremity abilities showed earlier and more rapid decline than the abilities of the upper extremities and hands. This study helps to better understand the health condition and aging process of older adults.

Dementia is estimated to affect 50 million people worldwide [1]. A significant proportion of residents in residential homes are people with moderate to severe dementia [2, 3]. Apathy amongst them is a major issue [3–5]. Tovertafel is an interactive table that was designed to reduce apathy and to facilitate play for people with moderate to severe dementia [6].This mixed methods study has three aims; firstly to explore the Tovertafels’ impact upon the wellbeing of people with moderate to severe dementia in a residential care home from the professional carers’ perspective; secondly to explore the impact of Tovertafel on the wellbeing of these carers; and thirdly to explore whether Tovertafel has any impact on the quality and quantity of visits by the family of the residents. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 carers and The Work Related Quality of Life Scale (WRQoL) [7] was used to explore carers’ perspective of the extent to which Tovertafel improved their own wellbeing and the quality of their working life.Some key findings indicate that visiting families interacted more with their loved-one when they are using the Tovertafel. Residents do use Tovertafel when it is switched on, but many needed to be initially prompted by staff. Tovertafel did have a positive impact upon residents’ mood during the time it was used and a short time after. Tovertafel also had an impact on improving interaction between carers and residents when it was on. Tovertafel’s most successful games are reported as being the bubbles and puzzles, and carers also stressed the importance of identifying an appropriate location for the Tovertafel, to enable optimum usage.

Digitization is progressing intensively, in particular in the world of work. Thereby, intelligent systems, mobile devices, cloud computing, and social media change the development of work and employment by (in parts) replacing employees or changing ways of production. In line with demographic change and in order to face economic, societal, and demographic challenges of a future labor market, it is necessary to consider the integration of aging employees. Therefore, this paper investigates the perception of motivational factors and stress factors triggered by technology in the working context. In addition, factors influencing the individual perception of strains are analyzed. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted (N = 507) asking for agreement to motivational and stressing factors in the context of increasing digital working environments. The results show that the overall motivational factors received a similar evaluation pattern for younger and older participants. However, the younger employees showed stronger agreements to all motivational aspects. Additionally, the results show that the perception of techno-stress factors was significant lower in the older aged group compared to the younger aged group. The study’s findings highlight the importance of user diversity for a successful and healthy transformation to a digital work environment putting employees needs and requirements into the center.

The anxiety of the elderly has been one of the most common psychological disorders, which will lead to increased mortality and economic loss. Exercise therapy has been shown to alleviate anxiety in the elderly. This study aims to compare the impact of simple exercise therapy and gamified exercise therapy on the elderly’s anxiety. For the elderly, this research developed a prototype system which allows players to control the video game Tetris by hitting the punch bag to gamify the process of exercise. The study recruited 14 subjects with an average age of 66 years (60–75). The participants were divided into a control group with only simply punching and an experimental group with gamification intervention. This study used The State Trait Anxiety Scale and the Rating of Perceived Exertion. The game score changes in the experimental group were recorded. The results show that compared with simple exercise therapy, gamified exercise therapy has a more significant mitigation effect on the state anxiety of the elderly. The degree of exercise fatigue of both groups is consistent. It is shown that such simple gamification is not a big challenge for the cognitive ability of the elderly, and most of the participants felt satisfied with the procedure and expressed initiatives to play the game. This method might be a promising intervention for relieving the elderly’s anxiety. In the future work, it is necessary to conduct long-term experiments to verify the effect of gamification of exercise therapy on the trait anxiety of the elderly.

Cognitive flexibility is an important ability to adapt to changing situations. We consider the evolution of technologies in the digital era as a changing situation requiring the individuals to maintain a certain cognitive flexibility. Across the lifespan, cognitive flexibility is an essential ability to adapt to a continuous evolution of human-computer interactions (HCI). In this study, we observe older adults in a playful robotic task aiming to observe their cognitive flexibility in order to consider if older adults shows an adequate level of cognitive flexibility to solve a problem solving task with unknown robotic cubes. The playful robotic task engages the participants individually in problem solving a puzzle-based challenge with modular robotics.

This driving simulator study was conducted to investigate the drivers’ eye movement pattern in automated and manual driving condition, and examine which ocular metrics are effective to evaluate the vigilance (response task) of drivers when they in a state of fatigue. Images of drivers’ eye movement were recorded in both conditional automated and manual driving conditions. Ocular metrics such as horizontal eye activity, vertical eye activity, PERCLOS and time of each eye closure (TEEC) were obtained from the images, and the metrics were averaged in a 5-min period with the label of fatigue level (Karolinska Sleepiness scores). Using a within-participant design, twenty participants experienced automated and manual driving with response tasks. Results of the study showed that drivers’ horizontal and vertical eye activity were generally higher than that observed during manual driving when drivers in some signs of sleepiness. However, with the deepening of fatigue, drivers’ eye activity decreased significantly in automated driving condition, but a sustainable effect was found in manual driving. Interestingly, the ocular metric of TEEC seems more accurate to evaluate the vigilance of drivers than PERCLOS in automated driving condition. Therefore, decreasing the time of each eye closure seems a useful way to increase the vigilance of drivers.

Aging impacts muscle function and reduces one’s ability to perform daily tasks comfortably. Elderly people face various challenges due to such condition to continue perform their work. Elderly farmers or workers are often expose to accidents or muscle injuries due to stressful work condition and can easily get tired. Elderly people find it difficult to use or adapt current set of human augmentation devices mainly due to the size, weight and ability to use it in agricultural environment. Previously developed a soft wearable and lightweight augmented walking suit (AWS) assists swing phase of the walking gait. Evaluation showed reduced muscle efforts and no major change in gait kinematics. To understand the requirement, usability and usefulness of the AWS in real life situation we conducted survey and pilot trial with farmers in rural areas. In this paper we discussed the feedback and requirements received through survey and pilot trials. The survey and subjective evaluation from these trials suggests the elderly people prefers lightweight and wearable assistive devices to reduce the required muscle efforts of similar tasks.

One major concern for the elderly is the decline in their ability to control their hands, which can significantly affect their ability to perform activities of daily living. One of the important hand functions that deteriorate over time is the ability to control finger force exertion, due to the gradual decrease in finger muscle strength as people age. Previous studies have shown that with proper training, it is possible to regain finger strength. However, when designing training systems for finger force control, visualization of the finger forces plays an important role in its effectiveness. In this paper, we describe the development of the augmented reality pressing and evaluation system (AR-PETS), an augmented reality based prototype system for finger force control training. We discuss the development of the system, as well as the design considerations during the development of the system.

The aim of this study is to explore the main aspects that affect pre/during and post-learning experiences in later age. Specifically, the study examined the problems adult learners encountered in learning how to use digital technologies, accessibility in learning and strategies to enhance technology-based learning experiences that take into account the ageing process. Eighty-one learners from learning organizations in the North of Portugal (Community-dwelling older adults, Short-time Courses and Universities of Third Age) participated in this study. The participants attended a set of learning sessions related with the use of digital devices and data were collected from observation notes and group interviewing. Results suggest that there is a variety of prominent aspects that can affect pre-/during and post-learning experiences in later age that include the access to technology, time availability for learning and lack of on-demand learning instructions. A set of recommendations to design technology-based learning experience that takes the ageing process into account is proposed and lessons from the study are discussed.

In recent years, there is an increasing trend towards using wearable activity trackers to help monitor and track physical activities (PA) for older adults, with the purpose of motivating regular PA for better health. However, existing activity trackers are frequently abandoned within a short period of time. One of the major reasons is that they do not differentiate individual PA habits and provide PA recommendations based on a unified standard, which may lead to unrealistic suggestions and thus cause frustrations. In order to motivate long-term use of activity trackers and promote PA progression in older adults, PA recommendations should adapt to the changes of an individual’s PA habits. As a step towards achieving this, we introduce in this paper an innovative multi-scale personalized LSTM model that can predict an individual’s daily PA level with satisfied accuracy. This model is verified through a series of experimental studies.