User-centred multimodal reminders for assistive living

Abstract

While there has been a lot of research on the usability of reminders and alarms in the work context, the home has been somewhat neglected despite the importance of reminder systems for telecare and assistive living systems. We conducted a comprehensive mixed-methods study into the requirements for useable and acceptable reminders in the home. The study consisted of a questionnaire (N=379), 6 focus groups, and 7 home tour interviews. Our results highlight the need for highly flexible and contextualized multimodal and multi-device reminder solutions that build on existing successful strategies for remembering in and around the home. We suggest that developers of home care reminder systems should design for diversity,

The impact of unwanted multimodal notifications

“…Providing multiple ways to interact can improve accessibility, which has prompted a number of researchers to call for the inclusion of multiple modalities in home care technology [11,19,25]. In addition, researchers have argued that dynamically switching between modalities when appropriate will also lead to increased user acceptability [1,18,30,31]; for example, switching to a more private modality (e.g.…”

“…There have been numerous attempts at creating a model of when to deliver notifications in the home. Vastenburg, Keyson & Ridder [27] argued that user acceptance of a notification is dependent on the message urgency and the attentional focus of the user, but did not take into account user activity or social context, which other researchers have argued is very important in the home [18,19,24]. Nagel, Hudson & Abowd [24] found that people had different opinions on which activities could be acceptably interrupted.…”

“…Nagel, Hudson & Abowd [24] found that people had different opinions on which activities could be acceptably interrupted. McGeeLennon, Wolters & Brewster [19] reported that people expressed a strong desire for personalisation in home reminder technology.…”

“…technology for the home environment [18,19,24,27,30]. Rejection could lead to the user ignoring or disabling the system [18], limiting its ability to help its users achieve a higher quality of life.…”

“…A number of researchers have advocated the inclusion of multiple modalities to make such technology more effective and appropriate [1,11,16,18,19,20,31].…”