Aysegül Dogangün

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Memory Aid System

Background: The ability to remember future intentions is compromised in both healthy and cognitively impaired older adults. Assistive technology provides older adults with promising solutions to cope with this age-related problem. However, the effectiveness and efficiency of such systems as memory aids is seldom evaluated in controlled, randomized trials. Objectives: We evaluated the effectiveness of a memory aid system, the InBad (engl. InBath), for bathroom-related daily care. Conceptually, the InBad learns user behavior patterns and detects deviations from the learned pattern in order to notify the user of a forgotten task. Methods: We simulated a challenging morning routine consisting of 22 bathroom activities with a sample of 60 healthy older adults. Participants were randomly assigned to three groups: (1) ‘no memory support’, i.e. participants received no support at all, (2) ‘list support’, i.e. participants could retrieve a list of all activities, and (3) ‘system support’, i.e. participants received prompts for specific activities that had not yet been executed. Results: Both support groups executed significantly more activities compared to the ‘no support’ group. In addition, system support resulted in significantly better performance compared to list support with no significant differences between the two groups in overall task duration. Conclusion: The assistive support system was the most effective and efficient memory aid. The results suggest that assistive technology has the potential to enable older adults to remain safe and independent in their own home.

Supporting Users in Setting Effective Goals in Activity Tracking

In this paper we present the development of the pedometer app Move My Day which implements goal setting as its main persuasive design principle. Manual goal input as well as two strategies to support users in setting realistic goals, namely reference routes and personal goal recommendation, were implemented. The proposed algorithm for adaptive personal goal recommendation is designed in a way that it recommends short-term goals considering motivational aspects and gradually raises goals in the long term to meet physical activity recommendations. In a 12 week field study, we investigated the potentials of the two support strategies. Results indicate that about half of the users appreciate goal setting support and that especially personal goal recommendation seems to have potential to support users in setting effective physical activity goals.

Using Psychophysiological Parameters to Support Users in Setting Effective Activity Goals

Goal-setting has shown some promise in promoting physical activity behavior change among adults. In this context, adaptive goal setting has been identified as a relevant future research area. However, it is not yet addressed in research sufficiently. We present a theoretical approach for adaptively supporting users in goal-setting. We explore potentials of using heart rate variability (HRV) for tailoring goal-setting in activity tracking applications. In consideration of intrapersonal variance in HRV, we suggest strategies for adaptively supporting goal-setting. We indicate the potential of HRV as a parameter for designing supportive activity tracking applications.

An Approach to Improve Physical Activity by Generating Individual Implementation Intentions

Daily physical activity not only empowers the body, but it also invigorates the mind and helps people cope with the struggle of everyday life. A balanced amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity is recommended. Major barriers that lead to low levels of physical activity are lack of time and motivation. The objective of this paper is to generate individual recommendations to improve physical activity by using if-then plans - so called Implementation Intentions. We developed a mobile application named DayActivizer to collect all the necessary activity data by the user. Based on the collected data, the application automatically recommends activities within if-then plans with an increasing degree of physical effort to counteract insufficient physical exercise concerning individual daily routine. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a field study (N=8) and qualitative interviews in which every participant was asked to examine the validity of the individual recommended implementation intentions.

Interdisciplinary Research in Assistive Systems

Sociotechnical artifacts that address issues of the demographic change demand an integrated research agenda and an interdisciplinary research scope. However, interdisciplinary research is oftentimes structurally and methodologically underrepresented in Germany. In order to address this, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany is funding eight interdisciplinary projects over the course of five years, that integrate researchers with amultitude of disciplinary perspectives. As such, these research groups follow two goals: they are incubators for interdisciplinary competence, as well as designers and developers of sociotechnical systems and services that tackle problems of the demographic change. It is our pleasure to present the current special issue with a selection of scientific papers and case reports about the divergent artifacts, processes, and methods that are developed by these research groups. Collectively these perspectives shed light on some of the opportunities as well as the pitfalls of interdisciplinary research and the challenges that come with the complex intertwinement of oftentimes diverging disciplinary perspectives. Thefirst contributionbyGraf et al. evaluates aHumanRobot-Interaction study conducted during public science events in order to gain insights into the relevance of the “point of interaction” for successful and user-friendly interaction with a non-anthropomorphic robot. The second article by Protzak et al. evaluates two user studies on pedestrian traffic behavior. The studies investigate the reaction times and errors made by the participants in simulated dangerous traffic situations. As such they generate knowledge for the development of an assistance system for older pedestrians.

Designing a Holistic Behavior Change Support System for Healthy Aging

Abstract In this paper, we describe the development of a behavior change support system to improve health. The system is designed for people in the age range of 50–65 with an interdisciplinary approach. The basic structure of the presented system consists of two main modules: a monitoring module to collect and analyze data and an intervention module to support behavior changes. Based on the results of a requirements analysis and findings gathered from a conducted literature review and own analyses, the behavior change system addresses the following lifestyle areas: physical activity, nutrition, mental fitness, sleep, and nature contact. We outline how the concept is developed with regards to the results of the requirements analysis and psychological foundations to explain and predict motivation and behavior change processes. We describe how single system components match phases of behavior change models and how they were implemented into an Android application. Finally, we present the results of usability studies where the comprehensibility of the concept and application was tested together with the usability of navigation structure and design. The results show that the target group is able to understand the concept and can navigate through the system easily.

Corrigendum to: Designing a Holistic Behavior Change Support System for Healthy Aging

*Corresponding author: Katja Herrmanny, University of Duisburg-Essen, Personal Analytics, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany, e-mail: katja.herrmanny@uni-due.de Michael Schwarz, Katrin Paldán, Nils Beckmann, Jennifer Sell, Nils-Frederic Wagner, Aysegül Dogangün, University of Duisburg-Essen, Personal Analytics, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany, e-mails: michael.schwarz@uni-due.de, katrin.paldan@uni-due.de, nils.beckmann@uni-due.de, jennifer.sell@stud.uni-due.de, nils-frederic.wagner@uni-due.de, ayseguel.doganguen@uni-due.de Unfortunately, there are citations missing of the VisAWI-s (Moshagen & Thielsch, 2013) and the System Usability Scale (Brooke, 1996).

Tagungsband des Workshops „Gemeinsam Altern erleben“

Der in Forschungsansätzen zunehmende Gebrauch des Ausdrucks „alternde Gesellschaft“ weist bereits darauf hin, dass das Altern nicht nur die einzelne Person betrifft, sondern vielmehr ein gemeinsam erlebter Prozess ist, welcher die Person, ihr Umfeld und gesellschaftliche Strukturen beeinflusst. Die Verwendung dieses Ausdrucks birgt aber auch die Gefahr, den Fokus auf den einzelnen Menschen zu verlieren. Eine Herausforderung des Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), das sich mit Unterstützungstechnologien für ältere Menschen befasst, ist die Berücksichtigung beider Aspekte: AAL-Lösungen sollen maßgeschneiderte Systeme sein, die den Anforderungen des Einzelnen gerecht werden, ihm aber gleichzeitig den Kontakt und das gemeinsame Erleben mit anderen Menschen erleichtern und ermöglichen. Die Erkenntnisse des Demografie-Werkstattgesprächs in Berlin „Älter werden bei guter Gesundheit“ (2013) unterstreichen die Relevanz beider Aspekte durch die Bedenken, dass einerseits Kapazitäten für die angemessene gesundheitliche Betreuung fehlen werden, andererseits Altersisolation stark verbreitet sein wird. Die Forschung und Entwicklung im AAL-Umfeld und der Mensch-Technik-Interaktion für den demografischen Wandel haben zum Ziel, mit innovativen und auf die individuellen Bedürfnisse der Nutzer zugeschnittenen Technologien Unterstützung im Alterungsprozess anzubieten und somit die Lebensqualität der Einzelnen in einer sich wandelnden Gesellschaft zu sichern und zu erhöhen.