Investigating socially assistive systems from system design and evaluation: a systematic review

Abstract

Purpose The development of assistive technologies that support people in social interactions has attracted increased attention in HCI. This paper presents a systematic review of studies of Socially Assistive Systems targeted at older adults and people with disabilities. The purpose is threefold: (1) Characterizing related assistive systems with a special focus on the system design, primarily including HCI technologies used and user-involvement approach taken; (2) Examining their ways of system evaluation; (3) Reflecting on insights for future design research. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted using the keywords “social interactions” and “assistive technologies” within the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, ACM, Science Direct, PubMed, and IEEE Xplore. Results Sixty-five papers met the inclusion criteria and were further analyzed. Our results showed that there were 11 types of HCI technologies that supported social interactions for target users. The most common was cognitive and meaning understanding technologies, often applied with wearable devices for compensating users’ sensory loss; 33.85% of studies involved end-users and stakeholders in the design phase; Four types of evaluation methods were identified. The majority of studies adopted laboratory experiments to measure user-system interaction and system validation. Proxy users were used in system evaluation, especially in initial experiments; 42.46% of evaluations were conducted in field settings, primarily including the participants’ own homes and institutions. Conclusion We contribute an overview of Socially Assistive Systems that support social interactions for older adults and people with disabilities, as well as illustrate emerging technologies and research opportunities for future work.

Task Automation Intelligent Agents: A Review

“…This study uses the search strategy previously used by Qiu et al [24]. This is a systematic methodology that includes conducting a search on databases with search terms and analyzing articles based on inclusion and exclusion criteria.…”

A Review of Data Gathering Methods for Evaluating Socially Assistive Systems

“…We used the same search strategy as described in detail in [ 25 ]. In 2019, a literature search was conducted to explore the data gathering methods of SASs.…”

“…According to the previous study [ 25 ], we used two categories of the medical subject heading (mesh) terms: “social interactions” and “assistive technologies”. Synonyms and spelling variations of these two MeSh terms were used in several combinations and modified for the six databases.…”

“…Hence, we have outlined the research methods used to study SASs, identify the outcomes, inform design practice, and guide further research. In a prior work [ 25 ], we mainly reported using human-computer interaction (HCI) technologies for SASs and the general categories of system evaluation. In this review, we mainly focus on data gathering methods for assessing SASs.…”