Using familiar technologies in unfamiliar ways and learning from the old about the new

Abstract

Findings are reported from a study of the befriending scheme for older people that includes a bi-weekly recreational telephone conference. Participants were visited in their homes soon after one of these ''link-ups''. What emerges is a picture of the telephone as a mundane technology. The telephone receiver, the telephone conference, and even the content of the talk are not foregrounded in the accounts of the participants. Instead, they provided a rich account of their daily experiences that happen to include the technology. Amongst these experiences, the befriending scheme in general, and the feeling of contact provided by the linkups in particular, are seen as the most important experiences. It is concluded that the designers of domestic technologies for recreation need to focus on experience rather than tasks when formulating design requirements. The uses and gratification model developed for describing mass media usage is suggested as one way of conceptualising these requirements. Finally, an experience-artefact cycle is outlined, that parallels Carroll's task-artefact cycle, to describe the evolution of technology in this area.

Guided participation in ICT-education for seniors: Motivation and social support

“…It is the mutual active participation, in our case focusing on ICT. Then, the activities themselves can be one motivator, like in [14], the input of the social gathering as such, another, like in [17], [24]. We also believe in the greater community outreach power of such clubs.…”

“…What further provides a good tool to evaluate both, activities and participation in the SC, is the use of motivational categories found out in uses and gratifications studies of mass media [14]. The dominating motivational category of SC is instrumental, where getting new information and skills for performing activities via computer are in focus.…”

“…[26]). One good example is a UK-based study [14] where researchers used telephone conference to support sociability of the elderly living alone. Instead of introducing new technology they relied on old, well-known means and based their design on recreational (not work-related) use.…”

Socially dependable design: The challenge of ageing populations for HCI

“…This befriending scheme supports elderly individuals through recreational telephone conferences and weekly one-to-one telephone contact. The content of the talk is not foregrounded in the accounts of the participants; the value seems to be in terms of human contact (Reed and Monk, 2004).…”

CUHTec

“…For example, a project at York is examining the design issues involved in adapting telephone conferencing to recreational uses [4].…”