Ambient communication and sense of presence device

Abstract

The number of elderly people is increasing rapidly both in absolute numbers and in relation to younger population. It is the benefit for both the elders and the communities that elderly people continue to live in their own homes as long as possible. Therefore technology should be used to help the elders in their homes. As loneliness and social isolation have negative impact on the health and happiness of the older population, ambient devices and social networking may be used to help the elderly connect with their friends and families. In this paper we will demonstrate our solution, the Amcosop system, which will help elders feel safe and keep connected with their nearest and dearest.

Towards your Parents' Social Network Platform: Design of a User Interface for the Age of Retirement

“…But especially elderly people often have problems using OSN and ICT since existing user interfaces are often too complex for them and do not meet their special requirements [9,10,18,19]. Older and younger adults differ significantly in their way of solving problems on websites [20].…”

“…Alternatives like Google+ and Twitter only have about 7% of users who are more than 55 years old [8]. The reason for this is not only in the fact that they do not consider social networks necessary and useful, but also that only few OSN offer solutions to the special needs of elderly us [9].…”

“…Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2017 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/41608 ISBN: 978-0-9981331-0-2 CC-BY-NC-ND of web pages and mobile devices are often too complex for elderly users, who often have not invested much time in learning the skills to use such systems [9]. The easiest solution would be to simplify the UI of these applications, thereby increasing the usability by reducing the complexity [10].…”