Role of immersive experience technology for autonomy in older adults transitioned into assisted living: A user-centered design approach

The purpose of this study was to explore how immersive experience technology may impact older adults in transition into assisted living; through the perspective of older adults within those assisted living facilities. By creating a preliminary/exploratory study for future applied research, the goal of this study was to gather information on understanding and then specifying the resident's experiences in their transitions and their perspectives on the barriers and benefits in the use of immersive experience technologies prior to transitions. Understanding and specifying user needs are the first two steps in user-centered design, which helped guide this research, and will inform future research in production and evaluation of an immersive experience intervention design. This study was broken up into three phases, Phases 1 and 2 were two focus groups to gather qualitative data and Phase 3 was an online survey questionnaire to gather quantitative responses. The Phase 3 data is only included in the Appendix due to low response rates. Findings of this study revealed that loss of autonomy occurs prior to the transition, following two types of transitions; independent and dependent. The two types of transitions were found to have two different intervention paths, independent transitions leading to limited to no intervention and the dependent transitions having the children as the primary intervention. It was suggested that the virtual walkthrough would help improve autonomy in the independently transitioned older adults, through easing concern during the transition, as well as improving navigation and control within the new assisted living apartment once the transition is complete

Assessments of User Centered Design Framework for M-learning Application Development

This paper presents the evaluation criteria and process of the User Centered Design (UCD) framework for m-learning application development. Based on the proposed UCD framework we have designed and developed five mobile learning applications for various sectors. The main aim of this paper is to argue how the UCD framework as development methodology has been successful in developing robust mobile learning applications. The UCD framework for m-learning application assessments criteria is based on three evaluation processes. 1. The acceptance of the application by target group (usability assessments) 2. The user experience assessment of the target m-learning application based on education components. 3. Qualitative research e.g. semi-structured interview with developers, designers and the owner of the application. The analysis of these assessments demonstrates varies aspect of the proposed UCD framework functionalities and performance