Jim Rowan

Digital family portraits: supporting peace of mind for extended family members

A growing social problem in the U.S., and elsewhere, is supporting older adults who want to continue living independently, as opposed to moving to an institutional care setting. One key part of this complex problem is providing awareness of senior adults day-to-day activities, promoting peace of mind for extended family members. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a digital family portrait that provides qualitative visualizations of a family members daily life. Leveraging a familiar household object, the picture frame, our design populates the frame with iconic imagery summarizing 28 days. In a final implementation, the digital family portrait would gather information from sensors in the home.

Peek-a-drawer: communication by furniture

Peek-A-Drawer is a new communication device that uses furniture to support lightweight communication between people. It provides virtual shared drawers that connect family members who are located at a distance. When a user puts something in the upper drawer and closes it, a photograph is taken automatically and the image appears in the lower drawer at a distant place. The operation is as simple as using a drawer, allowing even children to communicate with their grandparents. As the camera only takes pictures of objects inside the drawer, privacy is assured.

Senior CHI — the CHI 99 development consortium

As is well known, the number of older adults within developed countries is increasing faster than their younger counterparts. By the year 2000, 35 million Americans will be older than 65 years of age. By 2010, this will increase to 39.7 million [ 1,2]. Such a change in demographics brings with it unique challenges and opportunities for both the public and private sectors. Human factors andergonomics have played, and can continue to play, a major role in meeting the challenge of designing for this community of users, Recent research shows that 25% of seniors with computers are online and 70% are using their computers daily [3]. This is the fastest growing group on Internet. To design effective systems and training programs in support of age-related performance issues, we must answer fundamental questions concerning older users and the ways in which they approach and use computing technology. What myths and stereotypes about older users can we dispel? What non-obvious truths about older users can we uncover?