Abstract:

In the context of unprecedented demographic changes faced by the European population, information and communication technologies (ICT) have proven to have a real potential in helping aging adults and seniors to improve independence and retain dignity. Consequently, several initiatives at both national and cross-national level are actively supporting the development of such technologies dedicated to elderly people in such a way as to increase acceptance in this population segment and to reduce learning barriers due to age and psychosocial factors.

In this paper, we present the outcomes and conclusions obtained by involving 220 seniors from three countries (Denmark, Poland and Romania) in a project funded under the European Ambient Assisted Living (ALL) program. CAMI stands for “Companion with Autonomously Mobile Interface” in “Artificially intelligent ecosystem for self-management and sustainable quality of life in AAL”. The project consortium comprises eight SME’s and universities from five European countries who aim to develop an integrated ICT solution at the overlap of tele- care and health, smart homes and robotics. The solution is designed as an innovative architecture that allows for individualized, intelligent self-management which can be tailored to an individual’s preferences, culture, level of comprehension, skill, educational needs and learning style. In order to achieve its goals the project has adopted a user-centered approach in which older adults and seniors (CAMI end-users) are involved throughout the project lifetime.

Analytical methods such as shadowing and self-documentation have involved 18 end-users of age 65-81. The participants exhibited a positive attitude towards ICT while their experience with technologies varied depending on their professional background. Most participants mentioned that they learn about new technologies from their younger family members but that they are afraid to do it by themselves without guidance.

A multinational survey involving 105 respondents ages 65-75 revealed that 90 respondents (85.7%) have access to the internet and almost 60% of them use it at least once a day. They most often use the internet to interact with other people (e-mail, keeping in touch with family), to search for information and/or daily news. Despite the fact that only 33% respondents were interested in learning to use new technologies, a much higher percentage expressed interest when specific technologies were clearly presented to them.

By employing the best-worst scaling (BWS) method, also called MaxDiff, to a total of 57 CAMI end-users we have identified the most appreciate ICT technologies as follows: (a)monitoring at home of health parameters; (b)smart homes with various sensors, such as smoke, temperature, open doors, etc; and (c)computer supervised physical exercises. The end-users also considered the first two to be the most easy to learn as they are familiar with many aspects related to health and home.

The obtained results helped propose guidelines for decreasing acceptance barriers of ICT solutions among the aging population. We implemented these in the design and development of a serious game application that supports seniors in learning to perform physical exercises. Through the integration with an e-health application for self-monitoring of health parameters (e.g. blood pressure, glucose, heart rate, weight, etc.) CAMI end-users can learn how to for maintaining a healthy and independent lifestyle.

Keywords:

Serious game application, shadowing, self-documentation.