Older adults are normally characterized as consumers, rather than producers, of digital content. Current research concerning the design of technologies for older adults typically focuses on providing access to digital resources. Access is important, but is often insufficient, especially when establishing new social relationships. This paper investigates the nature and role of digital content that has been created by older adults, for the purpose of forging new relationships. We present a unique field study in which seven older adults (aged 71-92 years), who did not know each other, used a prototype iPad application (Enmesh) to create and share photographs and messages. The findings demonstrate that older adults, even those in the "oldest old" age group, embraced opportunities to express themselves creatively through digital content production. We show that self-expression and social engagement with peers can be realized when sociotechnical systems are suitably designed to allow older adults to create and share their own digital content.
In the field of design, it is accepted that users' perceptions of systems are influenced by emotion as much as cognition, and functionally-complete products will not be adopted if they do not appeal to emotions. While software engineering methodologies have matured to handle non-functional requirements such as usability, what has not been investigated fully is the emotional needs of people. That is, what do users want to feel, and how do they feel about a system? In this paper, we argue that these emotional desires should be treated as first-class citizens in software engineering methodology, and present preliminary work on including emotions in requirements models using emotional goals. We evaluate these models both with a controlled user study, and on a case study of emergency systems for older people. The results of the controlled user study indicate that people are comfortable interpreting and modifying our models, and view the inclusion of emotions as first-class entities as a positive step in software engineering. The results of our case study indicate that current emergency systems fail to address the emotional needs their users, leading to low adoption and low usage. We conceptualised, designed, and prototyped an improved emergency system, and placed it into the homes of nine older people over a period of approximately two weeks each, showing improved user satisfaction over existing systems. 1. By "design" here, we refer to the design of the product, not of the software architecture or detailed designs.
People in close relationships, who are separated by distance, often have difficulty expressing intimacy adequately. Based on the results of an ethnographic study with couples, a prototype was developed to test the feasibility of technology in the domain of intimacy. Hug Over a Distance is an air-inflatable vest that can be remotely triggered to create a sensation resembling a hug. Although the couples did not consider the vest to be useful in their daily lives, the prototype served to provoke and stimulate design ideas from the couples during participative design workshops. An additional and unexpected benefit was also found: the prototype enhanced the couples' understanding of the researchers' methods, suggesting that prototypes can serve as tools to make participatory design volunteers aware of their importance in academic research.
Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life that has received insufficient attention from HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) researchers despite their rapidly growing interest in the design of interactive technologies for domestic use. Intimate acts differ from other activities, and there are unexplored opportunities to develop interactive technologies to support these acts. This paper presents the first phase of a two-part study exploring the potential of interactive technologies to support intimate relationships. We contribute to this uncharted domain of HCI research a literature review of concepts useful in understanding intimacy and methods for its investigation. We conclude with preliminary results and suggestive design ideas for interactive technologies intended to support intimacy.
When designing a usability evaluation, choices must be made regarding methods and techniques for data collection and analysis. Mobile guides raise new concerns and challenges to established usability evaluation approaches. Not only are they typically closely related to objects and activities in the user's immediate surroundings, they are often used while the user is ambulating. This paper presents results from an extensive, multi-method evaluation of a mobile guide designed to support the use of public transport in Melbourne, Australia. In evaluating the guide, we applied four different techniques; field-evaluation, laboratory evaluation, heuristic walkthrough and rapid reflection. This paper describes these four approaches and their respective outcomes, and discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses for evaluating the usability of mobile guides.
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