User Requirements for Inclusive Technology for Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Active aging technologies are increasingly designed to support an active lifestyle. However, the way in which they are designed can raise different barriers to acceptance of and use by older adults. Their designers can adopt a negative stereotype of aging. Thorough understanding of user requirements is central to this problem. This paper investigates user requirements for technologies that encourage an active lifestyle and provide older people with the means to self-manage their physical, mental, and emotional health. This requires consideration of the person and the sociotechnical context of use. We describe our work in collecting and analyzing older adults’ requirements for a technology which enables an active lifestyle. The main contribution of the paper is a model of user requirements for inclusive technology for older people.

Acknowledgments

Our research was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 643644 (ACANTO: A CyberphysicAl social NeTwOrk using robot friends). We thank Mark Mushiba for creating the scenarios’ animated storyboards, all participants of the study for their help in evaluating the scenarios, and anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions for improving the paper.

Notes

1. Recorded video descriptions of the scenarios as animated storyboards: http://bit.ly/2sCGEVd

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mlađan Jovanović

Mlađan Jovanović received PhD in Computer Science at the University of Belgrade in 2013. He is an Assistant Professor at Singidunum University, Belgrade. Before academia, he worked in the industry, focusing on the interactive computing systems. His main research interests include technologies for later life and human-centered AI.

Antonella De Angeli

Antonella De Angeli is a Full Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy. She holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Trieste. Antonella has a track record of successful social innovation projects. Recently, her research interests include active aging and participatory design.

Andrew McNeill

Andrew McNeill is a senior lecturer in Psychology at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. He regularly conducts research in both social psychology and human-computer interaction, especially in privacy and technologies for well-being of older adults.

Lynne Coventry

Lynne Coventry is the Director of PaCT Lab (Psychology and Communication Technology) at the University of Northumbria, UK. She received a PhD in Psychology. She has been working on the research that incorporates understanding of people, their use and acceptance of technology into the requirements and design process.