Pedro C. Santana

Home-based communication system for older adults and their remote family

As in many Latin-American countries, in Mexico many older adults live alone as a result of the migration of one or more of their relatives, mostly to the USA. Thus, not only do they live alone, but they might seldom see these relatives for long periods, even though they often depend on them financially. With the goal of designing appropriate communication technology for seniors and their relatives experiencing this situation, we conducted interviews and evaluated scenarios and prototypes to reveal the practical ways they maintain emotional ties despite the distance. Based on those findings, we envisioned a communication system through which seniors and their relatives can maintain close social ties by sharing information, personal reminiscences and stories. We found that older adults perceived the system as a richer, natural form of communication with their relatives that could facilitate their integration into the networks that currently connect members of their families.

Supporting emotional ties among mexican elders and their families living abroad

The aging of the population is a phenomenon faced by most nations, such as Mexico, where 7.5% of the population is older than 60 years, a significant proportion of whom live alone (10%). This fact is related with the ever increasing migration of one or more of their relatives, mostly to the USA. Our work aims to provide a technological solution that eases the isolation of elder people living alone in Mexico while their families are abroad. To envision and inform our design we interviewed independent old persons living alone. We propose an electronic family newspaper, through which elders and their families share information, personal reminiscences and cultural stories, and occasionally interact with each other. Through its functionality, the electronic newspaper enables elders not only to maintain close social ties, but ameliorate cognitive decline.

Supporting relationship maintenance for elders and family living abroad

A user-centered design approach based on ethnographic interviews and prototype evaluations, our research group envisioned a home-based pervasive communication system. The Electronic Family Newspaper (EFN) facilitates communication between elders and their families living abroad. The system is a blogging tool that operates on a tablet PC. Family members can access the system through any Web browser. The EFN lets users share messages, attach pictures, and create news sections, and elders can play the included memory game (based on revealing pairs of pictures).

A Web-based system to facilitate elders communication with their families living abroad

The aging of the population is a phenomenon faced by most nations. Growing old is often accompanied of a loss of close companionship which has been shown may aggravate the cognitive impairment of elders. From a qualitative study, key issues emerged regarding unmet needs of elders communication that we propose to address with Web-based technology. We decided to create an electronic family newspaper to incorporate elders to the current social networks created by their younger relatives who already communicate through Internet applications, such as IM and e-mail. The system uses Web-based technology to make it accessible from any Web browser for those users living abroad. To serve the needs of elders and make the input of information easier, several autonomous agents help the user to interact with the system that can be accessed by any electronic display with a touch screen, such as a tablet PC.

Heuristic Evaluation of an Interactive Television System to Facilitate Elders Home Care

This paper presents a usability evaluation of the design of a home care system for older adults, named iTVCare; the evaluation was held early on the design process in order to assess potential problems. The evaluation consisted on individually expert evaluations of its compliance with Jakob Nielsens usability heuristics for interaction design. Heuristics, were an efficient method for finding problems with the system and have headed to significant improvements in the software platform.

Augmented Education: An Opportunity for Digital Inclusion on Mexican Secondary Schools

This work proposes a mobile augmented reality system to improve Mexican secondary education, allowing students to access additional educational contents related to their textbooks. Our application recognize the augmented tags in the book and shows multimedia contents to complement the topics covered in the class. Usability testing of our augmented reality system showed a high user satisfaction.

Tangible User Interfaces: A New Trend in Interaction for Helping Children with Down Syndrome to Develop Reading Skills

This chapter describes the results of a research study implementing a teaching technological strategy to help Down syndrome children develop their reading skills. The study employed the pedagogical method proposed in “Down syndrome: reading and writing” (DSRW) book, augmented with tangible interfaces, resulting favorable results when tested on kids with this syndrome. This study was developed in three stages: First, a direct observation was conducted to help us understand the context of applying the DSRW methodology in sessions with Down children without any technological strategy involved. The second stage included a preliminary evaluation of a first prototype, created to test the reaction of a child with Down syndrome when is exposed to the tangible technology. Finally, the third stage consisted in the evaluation of a second prototype; this prototype was informed on the results of the preliminary evaluation and is more similar to the conceptual design.

A web-agent based system to extend the elders social family networks

The aging of the population is a phenomenon faced by most nations. From a qualitative study, key issues emerged regarding unmet needs of elders communication that we propose to address with a web-agent based communication system.