Elderly Centered Design for Interaction – The Case of the S4S Medication Assistant

AbstractSeveral aspects of older adults’ life can benefit from recent technological developments, but success in harnessing this potential depends on careful design and accessible, easy to use products. Design and development must be centered on the elderly and adequately consider interaction. In this paper we follow this design approach and put it to the test in developing a concrete application, aimed to contribute to lower the high levels of non-adherence to medication in the elderly population. The “Medication Assistant” application was developed following an iterative method centered, from the start, on the elderly and interaction design. The method repeats short-time development cycles integrating definition of scenarios and goals, requirements engineering, design, prototyping and evaluation. Evaluation, by end-users, of the increasingly refined prototypes, is a key characteristic of the method. The evaluation results provide information related to strengths and weaknesses of the application and yield suggestions regarding changes and improvements, valuable support further development. Results regarding evaluation of the second prototype of “Medication Assistant” are presented

Interacção multimodal : contribuições para simplificar o desenvolvimento de aplicações

Doutoramento em Engenharia InformáticaA forma como interagimos com os dispositivos que nos rodeiam, no nosso diaa- dia, está a mudar constantemente, consequência do aparecimento de novas tecnologias e métodos que proporcionam melhores e mais aliciantes formas de interagir com as aplicações. No entanto, a integração destas tecnologias, para possibilitar a sua utilização alargada, coloca desafios significativos e requer, da parte de quem desenvolve, um conhecimento alargado das tecnologias envolvidas. Apesar de a literatura mais recente apresentar alguns avanços no suporte ao desenho e desenvolvimento de sistemas interactivos multimodais, vários aspectos chave têm ainda de ser resolvidos para que se atinja o seu real potencial. Entre estes aspectos, um exemplo relevante é o da dificuldade em desenvolver e integrar múltiplas modalidades de interacção. Neste trabalho, propomos, desenhamos e implementamos uma framework que permite um mais fácil desenvolvimento de interacção multimodal. A nossa proposta mantém as modalidades de interacção completamente separadas da aplicação, permitindo um desenvolvimento, independente de cada uma das partes. A framework proposta já inclui um conjunto de modalidades genéricas e módulos que podem ser usados em novas aplicações. De entre as modalidades genéricas, a modalidade de voz mereceu particular atenção, tendo em conta a relevância crescente da interacção por voz, por exemplo em cenários como AAL, e a complexidade associada ao seu desenvolvimento. Adicionalmente, a nossa proposta contempla ainda o suporte à gestão de aplicações multi-dispositivo e inclui um método e respectivo módulo para criar fusão entre eventos. O desenvolvimento da arquitectura e da framework ocorreu num contexto de I&D diversificado, incluindo vários projectos, cenários de aplicação e parceiros internacionais. A framework permitiu o desenho e desenvolvimento de um conjunto alargado de aplicações multimodais, sendo um exemplo digno de nota o assistente pessoal AALFred, do projecto PaeLife. Estas aplicações, por sua vez, serviram um contínuo melhoramento da framework, suportando a recolha iterativa de novos requisitos, e permitido demonstrar a sua versatilidade e capacidades.The way we interact with the devices around us, in everyday life, is constantly changing, boosted by emerging technologies and methods, providing better and more engaging ways to interact with applications. Nevertheless, the integration with these technologies, to enable their widespread use in current systems, presents a notable challenge and requires considerable knowhow from developers. While the recent literature has made some advances in supporting the design and development of multimodal interactive systems, several key aspects have yet to be addressed to enable its full potential. Among these, a relevant example is the difficulty to develop and integrate multiple interaction modalities. In this work, we propose, design and implement a framework enabling easier development of multimodal interaction. Our proposal fully decouples the interaction modalities from the application, allowing the separate development of each part. The proposed framework already includes a set of generic modalities and modules ready to be used in novel applications. Among the proposed generic modalities, the speech modality deserved particular attention, attending to the increasing relevance of speech interaction, for example in scenarios such as AAL, and the complexity behind its development. Additionally, our proposal also tackles the support for managing multi-device applications and includes a method and corresponding module to create fusion of events. The development of the architecture and framework profited from a rich R&D context including several projects, scenarios, and international partners. The framework successfully supported the design and development of a wide set of multimodal applications, a notable example being AALFred, the personal assistant of project PaeLife. These applications, in turn, served the continuous improvement of the framework by supporting the iterative collection of novel requirements, enabling the proposed framework to show its versatility and potential

Desain Alat Exercise Ringan Guna Mengisi Waktu Luang Lansia Dalam Upaya Menjaga Kondisi Kesehatan Fisik Dan Psikis

Indonesia merupakan salah satu dari lima besar negara dengan jumlah penduduk lanjut usia terbanyak di dunia yakni mencapai 18,1 juta jiwa pada 2010 atau 9,7 persen dari jumlah penduduk dan angka tersebut terus meningkat tiap tahunnya. Pertambahan usia seiring dengan terjadinya proses penuaan membuat menurunnya kemampuan baik fisik maupun psikis pada lansia. Penurunan kemampuan lansia mengakibatkan terbatasnya aktifitas yang dapat dilakukan sehingga lansia memiliki banyak waktu luang hingga 10 jam per hari. Waktu luang tersebut dapat dimanfaatkan dengan melakukan berbagai aktifitas yang berdampak positif terutama bagi kesehatan lansia baik fisik maupun psikis. Aktifitas tersebut dapat berupa aktifitas fisik ringan atau aktifitas yang dapat menstimulus otak yang dapat mempertahankan kognitif, motorik, maupun sensorik lansia. Metode yang penelitian yang digunakan selain data literatur berupa metode shadowing terhadap lansia yang ada di Panti Tresna Werdha dan diaries studies tentang keseharian lansia diisi oleh pendamping lansia (caregiver). Selain itu juga dilakukan metode story telling dengan beberapa narasumber dari lansia itu sendiri, caregiver, dan interview dari expert dibidang kesehatan dan terapi. Dalam eksplorasi desain diperlukan juga studi dan analisa seperti pasar, aktifitas, permasalahan, kebutuhan, fitur dan atribut, bentuk, warna, mekanisme dan joint, material hingga operasional. Konsep yang diinginkankan adalah desain sarana waktu luang lansia yang elder friendly yang mengandung nilai healthy, Kenyamanan, keamanan, dan enjoyable produk. Healthy dengan memfasilitasi aktifitas yang dapat menjaga kesehatan lansia baik fisik dan psikis seperti aktifitas membaca dan/atau menulis, mendengarkan musik/suara, hingga aktifitas exercise ringan untuk alat gerak lansia. Selain itu desain juga aman dan nyaman digunakan sesuai dengan ergonomi antropometri yang tepat untuk lansia. Nilai enjoyable memperhatikan segi image produk dan fungsi dimana produk memberikan kesan menyenangkan dan tidak membosankan

Natural Transmission of Information Extraction Results to End-Users - A Proof-of-Concept Using Data-to-Text

Information Extraction from natural texts has a great potential in areas such as Tourism and can be of great assistance in transforming customers\u27 comments in valuable information for Tourism operators, governments and customers. After extraction, information needs to be efficiently transmitted to end-users in a natural way. Systems should not, in general, send extracted information directly to end-users, such as hotel managers, as it can be difficult to read. Naturally, humans transmit and encode information using natural languages, such as Portuguese. The problem arising from the need of efficient and natural transmission of the information to end-user is how to encode it. The use of natural language generation (NLG) is a possible solution, for producing sentences, and, with them, texts. In this paper we address this, with a data-to-text system, a derivation of formal NLG systems that use data as input. The proposed system uses an aligned corpus, which was defined, collected and processed, in about approximately 3 weeks of work. To build the language model were used three different in-domain and out-of-domain corpora. The effects of this approach were evaluated, and results are presented. Automatic metrics, BLEU and Meteor, were used to evaluate the different systems, comparing their values with similar systems. Results show that expanding the corpus has a major positive effect in BLEU and Meteor scores and use of additional corpora (in-domain and out-of-domain) in training language model does not result in significantly different performance. The scores obtained, combined with their comparison with other systems performance and informal evaluation by humans of the sentences produced, give additional support for the capabilities of the translation based approach for fast development of data-to-text for new domains

Desain Alat Exercise Ringan guna Mengisi Waktu Luang Lansia dalam Upaya Menjaga Kondisi Kesehatan Fisik dan Psikis

Indonesia merupakan salah satu dari lima besar negara dengan jumlah penduduk lanjut usia terbanyak di dunia yakni mencapai 18,1 juta jiwa pada 2010 atau 9,7 persen dari jumlah penduduk dan angka tersebut terus meningkat tiap tahunnya. Pertambahan usia seiring dengan terjadinya proses penuaan membuat menurunnya kemampuan baik fisik maupun psikis pada lansia. Penurunan kemampuan lansia mengakibatkan terbatasnya aktifitas yang dapat dilakukan sehingga lansia memiliki banyak waktu luang hingga 10 jam per hari. Waktu luang tersebut dapat dimanfaatkan dengan melakukan berbagai aktifitas yang berdampak positif terutama bagi kesehatan lansia baik fisik maupun psikis. Aktifitas tersebut dapat berupa aktifitas fisik ringan atau aktifitas yang dapat menstimulus otak yang dapat mempertahankan kognitif, motorik, maupun sensorik lansia. Metode yang penelitian yang digunakan selain data literatur berupa metode shadowing terhadap lansia yang ada di Panti Tresna Werdha dan diaries studies tentang keseharian lansia diisi oleh pendamping lansia (caregiver). Selain itu juga dilakukan metode story telling dengan beberapa narasumber dari lansia itu sendiri, caregiver, dan interview dari expert dibidang kesehatan dan terapi. Dalam eksplorasi desain diperlukan juga studi dan analisa seperti pasar, aktifitas, permasalahan, kebutuhan, fitur dan atribut, bentuk, warna, mekanisme dan joint, material hingga operasional. Konsep yang diinginkankan adalah desain sarana waktu luang lansia yang elder friendly yang mengandung nilai healthy, kenyamanan, keamanan, dan enjoyable produk. Healthy dengan memfasilitasi aktifitas yang dapat menjaga kesehatan lansia baik fisik dan psikis seperti aktifitas membaca dan/atau menulis, mendengarkan musik/suara, hingga aktifitas exercise ringan untuk alat gerak lansia. Selain itu desain juga aman dan nyaman digunakan sesuai dengan ergonomi antropometri yang tepat untuk lansia. Nilai enjoyable memperhatikan segi image produk dan fungsi dimana produk memberikan kesan menyenangkan dan tidak membosankan

Creating Age-friendly Communities

The "Creating Age-friendly Communities: Housing and Technology" publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities

Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives"

The "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: States of the Art and Future Perspectives" publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities