Ambient Monitoring from an Elderly-Centred Design Perspective: What, Who and How

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes a participatory design-oriented study of an ambient assisted living system for monitoring the daily activities of elderly residents. The work presented addresses these questions 1) What daily activities the elderly participants like to be monitored, 2) With whom they would want to share this monitored data and 3) How a monitoring system for the elderly should be designed. For this purpose, this paper discusses the study results and participatory design techniques used to exemplify and understand desired ambient-assisted living scenarios and information sharing needs. Particularly, an interactive dollhouse is presented as a method for including the elderly in the design and requirements gathering process for residential monitoring. The study results indicate the importance of exemplifying ambient-assisted living scenarios to involve the elderly and so to increase acceptance and utility of such systems. The preliminary studies presented show that the participants were willing to have most of their daily activities monitored. However, they mostly wanted to keep control over their own data and share this information with medical specialists and particularly not with their fellow elderly neighbours.

Managing flexible care with a context aware system for ageing-in-place

“…[8], [9]), most systems are generally focussed on presenting patterns of sensor data to informal caregivers or to professional healthcare providers [7]. Yet, care recipients have indicated a desire to have a say in what data about them is available, and to whom [9], [10].…”

Modular multimodal user interface for distributed ambient intelligence architectures

“…However, while significant milestones have been reached, much needs to be done in areas like the easiness of use and acceptability where user interfaces play an important role . Furthermore, user acceptance of new technologies must be taken into account, in fact, inappropriate implementations could increase isolation, reduce independence, and lead to users feeling as though they are under surveillance . The integration of sensors, actuators, and robots enables the implementation of AAL and Ambient Intelligence (AmI).…”

“…1 Furthermore, user acceptance of new technologies must be taken into account, 2 in fact, inappropriate implementations could increase isolation, reduce independence, and lead to users feeling as though they are under surveillance. 3 The integration of sensors, actuators, and robots enables the implementation of AAL and Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Several works in the literature have proposed approaches for such integration.…”

Living Labs as Educational Tool for Ambient Intelligence

“…A second project, Senior-Create IT [5], which was done in collaboration with researchers and four students from the program 'Ambient Interaction', focused on the needs and attitudes of elderly people with regards to monitoring their daily activities with sensors in the home. Following on from this, 25 students from the university's program on Communication and Multimedia Design were given the assignment to develop five iPad applications in groups of five that displays the ambient data in relevant and meaningful way to senior users.…”