Britt Östlund

Review: Seven Matters of Concern of Social Robots and Older People

This article maps the range of currently held scientific positions on matters of concern involving social robots and older people. 345 publications from peer-reviewed journals and conferences were narrowed down to 31 key publications that were studied in detail and categorised into seven matters of concern: (1) role of robots in older people’s lives, (2) factors affecting older people’s acceptance of robots, (3) lack of mutual inspiration in the development of robots for older people, (4) robot aesthetics, (5) ethical implications of using robots in caring for older people, (6) robotic research methodology, and (7) technical determinism versus social construction of social robots. The findings indicate that older people are implicated but not present in the development of robots and that their matters of concern are not identified in the design process. Instead, they are ascribed general needs of social robots due to societal changes such as ageing demographics and demands from the healthcare industry. The conceptualisation of older people seems to be plagued with stereotypical views such as that they are lonely, frail and in need of robotic assistance. Our conclusions are that the perceptions of older people need to be re-examined and perhaps redefined in order to fairly represent who they are, and that more research on older people as social robotic users is needed.

GiraffPlus: A System for Monitoring Activities and Physiological Parameters and Promoting Social Interaction for Elderly

This chapter presents a telehealth system called GiraffPlus supporting independent living of elderly in their own home. GiraffPlus system is a complex system which monitors activities and physiological parameters in the home using a network of sensors. The elaborated information is presented to the primary user, the elderly, and to secondary users like health care and home care providers and possibly to family members as a help to assess possible health and wellbeing deterioration, provide acute alarms, and support health procedure. The secondary users can also visit the elderly via the Giraff, a teleoperated robot that can communicate and move in the home under the control of the secondary user. The chapter focusses in particular on the deployment of the system in six real homes in Sweden, Italy and Spain. The chapter outlines the technological various components used, the expectations of the users and the evaluation method.

Silver Age Innovators: A New Approach to Old Users

When designing innovations for the silver age, it is not sufficient to discover old people’s needs only. In addition, one also has to discover old peoples’ new roles as consumers, citizens and innovators. Since these are people who until recently have been given few opportunities to make their voices heard, there is a need for methods that identify their needs and demands. More importantly, we need to study and use methods that reveal the sources of innovations behind their expressed problems and lifelong habits as users of technology. Three attempts to identify old people’s needs and demands by involving them in the design process are presented, drawn from design projects implemented in Sweden from 2005 to 2009. One project explores how the furniture market can be opened to new segments of older consumers. Another project concerns the development of services. The third project links older peoples lifelong habit of watching TV to the development of communication via the television medium. The results were analyzed from two points of view: How do we recognise a need that can be explored in design? When discovered, how do we know that this is a worthwhile need to explore? The first attempt shows that older people can present needs as active users with expressed and specific demands; the second attempt shows that older users can have a need to support the solution to problems which are not yet expressed and activated; and the third attempt shows them as users with latent needs that originate from their lifelong experiences, and needs to keep up with daily routines.

Reframing design culture and aging

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. ---Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor

Elderly People's Perceptions of a Telehealthcare System: Relative Advantage, Compatibility, Complexity and Observability

The use of telehealthcare systems to promote independent living for elderly people is growing. The results presented in this article, derived from an initial user lab test of a telecare system—GiraffPlus—indicate that the crucial factor for adoption of telehealthcare systems is not usability but the systems ability to support autonomy in everyday life. Eleven users tested the usability and reported what they perceived as possible benefits of having such a system at home. To support autonomy, customization is crucial for the system to be perceived as meaningful for the individual. Our analysis confirms previous research.

The revival of research circles : Meeting the needs of modern aging and the third age

This article provides evidence that it is worthwhile to reconsider the traditional research circle method as a means of involving people in the third age in fulfilling their needs to participate in learning activities and make their voices heard. The findings are based on three cases of research circles consistently driven by the interests of the older participants and which increased their capacity to deepen their life experiences, create a political agenda for necessary change, and become more attached to local history.

Case report : Implications of Doing Research on Socially Assistive Robots in real Homes

The current paper addresses the implications of doing research on socially assistive robots in real homes. In contrast to laboratory studies, studies of robots in their intended natural environments can provide insights into people’s experiences of robots, and if and how a robot becomes embedded and used in people’s everyday life. However, moving robots out of the lab and into real life environments poses several challenges. Laboratory methods mainly focus on cause-and-effect relations between independent and dependent variables, while researchers who are conducting studies in real homes have much less control. In home trials, researchers need to decide what kind of data is obtainable and available. In real homes, researchers face unique challenges that require unique and pragmatic approaches. Any single study conducted in a real home is likely to have methodological limitations. Therefore, several different studies using different robots and methods are needed before the results can be converged in order to reach conclusions that are convincingly supported. This paper is an effort to provide such a report on a specific empirical case and converging findings from other studies. The goal is to provide an account of the research challenges and opportunities encountered when introducing a robot into its intended practice: the homes of older people. The aim is to give enough details for other researchers to critically examine and systematically build on the insights and findings presented.

Making navigation simple? Initial user studies within the NavMem project

The aim of the NavMem project is to develop a mobile navigation companion for elderly persons with memory decline (MCI). The project is intended for a wide range of target users – e.g. persons with memory problems due to early dementia, stroke but also elderly persons in general. In the following we report results from studies made together with the Swedish Stroke Association. We describe the early stages of the user centered design process and provide a list of requirements. We also provide initial designs and early prototypes and report preliminary results from recent user tests.

Capturing seniors' requirements for assistive robots by the use of attention cards

This paper describes and reflects upon a senior-oriented participatory design methodology that facilitates communication, attention and creativity. Previous research indicates that seniors tend to lose focus and start cross talking during workshops, which results in broad and superficial findings. However, our workshop methodology indicates that the use of attention cards helps the seniors to stay focused by visualizing concrete first person narrative scenarios. This paper does not describe the findings of the workshop. Instead, we use our experience to propose ways in which the process of eliciting user requirements for novel technologies from old users with no prior experience of the technology in question can be made.

Using attention cards to facilitate active participation in eliciting old adults' requirements for assistive robots

Engaging old users in the exploration of future product concepts can be challenging. It is of great value to find ways to actively involve them in the design of novel technologies intended for them, particularly when they have no prior experience of the technology in question. One obstacle in this process is that many old people do not identify themselves as being old or they think that it (the technology) would be good for others but not themselves. This paper presents a card method to overcome this obstacle. A full-day workshop with three internal focus groups was run with 14 participants. Based on our experience, we propose a way in which active participation in the process of eliciting user requirements for assistive robots from old users with no prior experience of assistive robots can be carried out.