Alison Burrows

SPHERE: A Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment

It can be tempting to think about smart homes like one thinks about smart cities. On the surface, smart homes and smart cities comprise coherent systems enabled by similar sensing and interactive technologies. It can also be argued that both are broadly underpinned by shared goals of sustainable development, inclusive user engagement and improved service delivery. However, the home possesses unique characteristics that must be considered in order to develop effective smart home systems that are adopted in the real world [37].

Empirically derived user attributes for the design of home healthcare technologies

Designing effective home healthcare technologies is a complex task. In order to succeed, it is important to look beyond purely technology-driven solutions and to develop technologies and services that are flexible and reflect a sensitive understanding of the diverse users of such systems. The key contribution of this paper is to introduce 15 empirically derived attributes that can help designers to build a more detailed understanding of the potential users of home healthcare systems. The attributes are spread across four broad themes: technology in the home, experiences of technology, experiences of health and care, and thoughts about smart home technology for health and care. These themes and attributes emerged from an ethnographic study in which we interviewed people across 15 households. All interviews took place in people’s homes and were supplemented by home technology tours and cultural probes. It is intended that the 15 attributes be used in conjunction with demographic and household data to build a richer picture of personal experiences of home, health, and technology in real-life contexts. The aim was to provide an inclusive framework, based on empirically derived attributes, that helps to inform an overall user-centred design approach. To demonstrate one application of the attributes in design, the paper provides in-depth example of their use in the development of a rich set of data-driven personas.

Wi-Fi based passive human motion sensing for in-home healthcare applications

This paper introduces a Wi-Fi signal based passive wireless sensing system that has the capability to detect diverse indoor human movements, from whole body motions to limb movements and breathing movements of the chest. The real time signal processing is used for human body motion sensing, and software defined radio demo system are described and verified in practical experiments scenarios, which include detection of through-wall human body movement, hand gesture or tremor, and even respiration. The experiment results offer potential for promising healthcare applications using Wi-Fi passive sensing in the home to monitor daily activities, to gather health data and detect emergency situations.

Shared Language and the Design of Home Healthcare Technology

Words and language are central to most human communication. This paper explores the importance of language for the participatory design of smart home technologies for healthcare. We argue that to effectively involve a broad range of users in the design of new technologies, it is important to actively develop a shared language that is accessible to and owned by all stakeholders, and that facilitates productive dialogues among them. Our discussion is grounded firstly in work with end users, in which problematic language emerged as a key barrier to participation and effective design. Three specific categories of language barriers are identified: jargon, ambiguity, and emotive words. Building on this we undertook a workshop and focus group, respectively involving researchers developing smart health technologies and users, where the focus was on generating a shared language. We discuss this process, including examples that emerged of alternative terminology and specific strategies for creating a shared language.

SPLASH: Smart-Phone Logging App for Sustaining Hydration Enabled by NFC

Maintaining good hydration is crucial for adequate physical and mental performance for all human beings. In this paper we present SPLASH, an Android app that enables users to set daily goals and to keep track of their liquid intake through a combination of smart-phone NFC technology and NFC-tagged cups. We conducted several experiments to verify the robustness of the technology, which indicated that the selected NFC tags had acceptable robustness, operational distance and good penetration ability to meet the intended requirements for monitoring hydration. To further assess the feasibility of our concept, we evaluated SPLASH with ten users who gave feedback on its usability. We discuss the current prototypes advantages and limitations, as well as possible improvements and potential capabilities. At the end of this paper, we propose additional healthcare application scenarios for our concept.

Evaluating the use of voice-enabled technologies for ground-truthing activity data

Reliably discerning human activity from sensor data is a nontrivial task in ubiquitous computing, which is central to enabling smart environments. Ground-truth acquisition techniques for such environments can be broadly divided into observational and self-reporting approaches. In this paper we explore one self-reporting approach, using speech-enabled logging to generate ground-truth data. We report the results of a user study in which participants (N=12) used both a smart-watch and a smart-phone app to record their activities of daily living using primarily voice, then answered questionnaires comprising the System Usability Scale (SUS) as well as open ended questions about their experiences. Our findings indicate that even though user satisfaction with the voice-enabled activity logging apps was relatively high, this approach presented significant challenges regarding compliance, effectiveness, and privacy. We discuss the implications of these findings with a view to offering new insights and recommendations for designing systems for ground-truth acquisition ‘in the wild’.

Let's Spend Some Time Together: Exploring the Out-of-Box Experience of Technology for Older Adults

Designing technology for older people has traditionally focused on compensating for the decline in abilities that occurs with ageing. The research described in this paper followed a more holistic approach, focusing on the broader user experience of technology in the home environment. Specifically, this research was concerned with the very first interactions with a new product known as the Out-of-Box Experience OoBE: how older people acquire their technology, how they unpack it, and how they set it up. This paper describes two exploratory studies that used a design ethnography approach to build a rich picture of the OoBE of new technology for older adults. The findings indicate that older people experience varying benefits from the involvement of other people during the OoBE of new technology. Lastly, the paper discusses the value of social interaction in this context and offer recommendations on the design of the OoBE of technology to engage older adults.

Game theoretic approach towards optimal multi-tasking and data-distribution in IoT

Current applications of Internet of Things (IoT) often require nodes to implement logical decision-making on aggregated data, which involves more processing and wider interactions amongst network peers, resulting in higher energy consumption and shorter node lifetime. This paper presents a game theoretic approach used in Sensomax, an agent-based WSN middleware that facilitates seamless integration of mathematical functions in large-scale wireless sensor networks. In this context, we investigate game theoretic and auction-based techniques to optimise task distribution and energy consumption in IoT networks of multiple WSNs. We also demonstrate how our proposed game theoretic approach affects the performance of WSN applications with different operational paradigms.

Agent-based decentralised data-acquisition and time-synchronisation in critical healthcare applications

AAL platforms for health and care purposes are designed to be used by diverse stakeholders, such as household residents, carers and healthcare professionals, with equally diverse needs. Reducing the latency of such systems is key to achieving a positive user experience, as well as enabling appropriate responses to critical incidents. This paper introduces a distributed middleware solution that can improve data-acquisition, run computational algorithms locally and seamlessly deliver notifications to various subscribers. The paper further describes three time-synchronisation methods to achieve correct time-stamping of packets, using a combination of centralised and distributed packet processing.

Cultural probes and levels of creativity

Cultural probes are a design research method, which has gained prominence for being particularly suited to conducting research on sensitive topics and in personal contexts. This paper reports the methodological process of designing and deploying cultural probes to investigate the meaning of independence for older adults. We describe the rationale behind the development of individual elements of the probe kits, as well as a follow-up qualitative interview. Our discussion focuses on our experience of using this technique, with a view to informing appropriate and empowering research methodologies for older people.