Designing a Touch Screen Communication Device to Support Social Interaction amongst Older Adults

As people age, social connections can be lost due to a number of factors. Technology can enhance an older person’s social connectedness, facilitating the creation of new connections, as well as the maintenance of existing ones. As part of the Building Bridges project, a communication device was deployed in 9 older adult’s homes and evaluated over a period of 7-9 weeks. The goals of the study were to assess the usability of the device, to explore attitudes towards it and to gather insights into potential target user groups who may benefit from such technology. We present our findings which highlight the importance of feedback and confirmation in increasing the usability of a technology device for older adults. Emergent themes surrounding older adults’ attitudes to using such technology to keep in touch, include the importance of perceived usefulness and the ability to have some level of control over when communication occurs and with whom.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Julie Doyle

Zoran Skrba

Ronan McDonnell

Ben Arent

Conference

Publication date: September 2010

Publication date (Print): September 2010

Pages: 177-185

Affiliations

[0001]School of Public Health,

University College Dublin

[0002]TRIL Centre

University College Dublin

[0003]Centre for Health Informatics

Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2010.23

SO-VID: 9b6b35dd-96ac-461c-bc9b-61abffb1fc3b

Copyright statement: © Julie Doyle et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Proceedings of HCI 2010, University of Abertay, Dundee, UK

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of HCI 2010

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 24

Conference location: University of Abertay, Dundee, UK

Conference date: 6 - 10 September 2010

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction

Product

Product Information: 1477-9358BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2010.23

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

Designing a Touch Screen Communication Device to Support Social Interaction amongst Older Adults

Abstract