Suhas Govind Joshi

Assembling Fragments into Continuous Design: On Participatory Design with Old People

The paper takes a close look at a participatory design (PD) process with old users. We discuss how we organized and carried out the PD process so that they could participate in the mutual learning and co-construction activities on their own terms. We use the design of a radio to illustrate how the old users participated in the co-construction. We discuss some important topics to consider when organizing PD with old users: recruiting, timing, continuity, representativity and immediacy.

Lowering the Threshold: Reconnecting Elderly Users with Assistive Technology Through Tangible Interfaces

In this paper, we discuss tangible interfaces as an alternative to touch-based interfaces and report from a study where we ported traditional screen-based solutions to physical solutions in order to make information more accessible. Our research approach targets the needs of elderly users who struggle with using, or are unable to use, existing touch-based interfaces currently available in municipal care homes. In an attempt to make assistive technology more readily available to this group, we aim to draw on their existing knowledge, competence and habits when designing alternative assistive technology. We present a tangible alternative to an existing touch-based interface, and discuss how tangible interfaces can help assistive technology become more available and familiar, thereby lowering the threshold for use and making information more accessible.

A Collaborative Change Experiment: Diagnostic Evaluation of Telecare for Elderly Home Dwellers

This paper presents the diagnostic evaluation of a longitudinal collaborative change experiment that introduces telecare as a means for delivery of home care service to elderly home dwellers. The television is used as platform for delivery of care services from the home care nurses office to the private homes of the elderly home dwellers. We have included 34 participants in three sessions with evaluation and we use the results from the diagnostic evaluation to discuss how we can optimize the design of remote care in real environment. Our main findings concentrate on contextual factors that made impact on experienced usability issues, including timing and unstable network connection, complexity, and privacy and trust. In our study, we found that telecare is not for every elderly home dweller as it requires a high degree of functional capability in order to be experienced as appropriate and useful for the elderly users.

A Collaborative Change Experiment: Telecare as a Means for Delivery of Home Care Services

This paper presents a collaborative change experiment that introduces telecare as a means for delivery of home care service. The television is used as platform for delivery of services from the home care nurses to the elderly care recipients. Through the collaborative change experiment, we seek to address the interdependent relationship between the home care nurses and the elderly by studying the usability and user experiences on both sides of the interaction. Our work includes usability testing with the aim of optimizing the design of telecare. This paper reports findings concerning the spatial design, compensation of declined motor skills, audiovisual considerations and control mechanisms.

Confronting Common Assumptions About the Psychomotor Abilities of Older Adults Interacting with Touchscreens

This paper confronts commonly-made assumptions about older adults and their general levels of capability when interacting with technology by reporting from an evaluation involving 49 older adults (M = 81 years) where performance was studied during task solving on a touch-based interface. The tasks involved were derived from a set of corresponding psychomotor abilities that are commonly involved in interaction mechanisms associated with touchscreen devices: precision, steadiness, dexterity, speed, and coordination. The evaluation consisted of measuring the performance of participants as well as having them assessing their own performance. To provide empirical results on why it is argued that it can be dangerous to assume anything about the capabilities of older adults, multiple analyses of the gathered data were used to highlight individual, group-related, and general patterns. Important relations, levels of variance, and statistically significant effects are highlighted as the paper argues for how these particular results do not align with common assumptions. The discussion draws on both the empirical results as well as related research to advocate why designers should acknowledge individual capabilities to ensure maximized performance when designing enabling technology for older adults.

Co-exploring Interaction Opportunities for Enabling Technologies for People with Rheumatic Disorder

This paper presents a case of co-design for people with rheumatic disorder to support the argument of opening up the design space to include interaction opportunities found in the physical world. The position argued for is that opening up the design space beyond common screen-based interfaces may contribute to the design of enabling technologies for people with rheumatic disorders by acknowledging their varying capabilities during both design and use. The presented results consist of one thematic analysis of home interviews and group discussions as well as one statistical analysis of the results from a formative evaluation of six conceptual prototypes developed along with the participants. The paper uses the combination of the thematic analysis, the six conceptual prototypes, and formative evaluation of performance scores and preference ratings to demonstrate how our co-design process involving users with rheumatic disorder in all phases allowed participants to discover both limitations and opportunities as they explored and co-designed alternative concepts.

Implications for Design of Personal Mobility Devices with Balance-Based Natural User Interfaces

In this paper, we present a set of guidelines for designing personal mobility devices (PMDs) with body balance exclusively as input modality. Using an online survey, focus group and design workshop, we designed several PMD prototypes that used a natural user interface (NUI) and balance as its only form of user input. Based on these designs we constructed a physical and functional PMD prototype, which was tested using a usability test to explore how the balance interface should be designed. In conclusion, we discuss whether the guidelines from the literature could apply when designing PMDs and present a set of implications for the design of PMDs with balance-based NUIs based on both the guidelines and our own findings.

Designing an Indoor Navigation System for Elderly People’s Capabilities

The elderly population is increasing and the need of smart home technology and customized health-care solutions is growing rapidly. A common symptom of old age is cognitive impairment, which can in some cases lead to the inability of self-navigation. Numerous indoor navigation systems have proposed to solve such problems. However, previous developers have only to a minor extent included elderly in the design process, despite the user group’s complex needs. The solution presented in this paper is based on using recognizable aids and abstractions to ensure that the new proposed system is something elderly users can relate to and feel comfortable with. Other solutions often require wearable modules, or constant interaction, whereas this system does not require any of the two. In addition to our solution we present five implications when designing an indoor navigation system for elderly people.