Activities of daily life recognition using process representation modelling to support intention analysis

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on applying a range of traditional classification- and semantic reasoning-based techniques to recognise activities of daily life (ADLs). ADL recognition plays an important role in tracking functional decline among elderly people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. Accurate recognition enables smart environments to support and assist the elderly to lead an independent life for as long as possible. However, the ability to represent the complex structure of an ADL in a flexible manner remains a challenge. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents an ADL recognition approach, which uses a hierarchical structure for the representation and modelling of the activities, its associated tasks and their relationships. This study describes an approach in constructing ADLs based on a task-specific and intention-oriented plan representation language called Asbru. The proposed method is particularly flexible and adaptable for caregivers to be able to model daily schedules for Alzheimer’s patients. Findings – A proof of concept prototype evaluation has been conducted for the validation of the proposed ADL recognition engine, which has comparable recognition results with existing ADL recognition approaches. Originality/value – The work presented in this paper is novel, as the developed ADL recognition approach takes into account all relationships and dependencies within the modelled ADLs. This is very useful when conducting activity recognition with very limited features

An Elicitation Method for Technology-Assisted Goal Setting: Combating Problematic Social Networks Use as a Case Study.

Now that digital media has become an integral part of our everyday lives, people spend significant time using it for various purposes, including social networking and gaming. There is increasing acceptance in the literature of the link between obsessive, compulsive, and excessive usage of social media, e.g. social networks, and the wellbeing of users, whether personal, economic, or social. Despite the research on the negative experiences linked to problematic social networking usage, the work on how to regulate such an effect is at a preliminary stage. In the literature on behavioural change, technology-assisted solutions that utilise the concept of behavioural goals have started to appear, such as gamification and persuasive technology, mainly to increase motivation for change. Also, the literature has revealed that social networks can be augmented with functionalities to assist those seeking to regulate their problematic usage. When technology is used to assist behavioural change, e.g. apps for diet and smoking cessation, requirements become behavioural. While there are established methods for capturing business requirements in organisational information systems, characterised mainly by being a desired and declared state of the system, capturing behavioural requirements, such as goals, requires a different approach to the entire engineering lifecycle. Behavioural requirements gathering and validation would require dealing with issues of unreliability and denial present in problematic behaviours. Therefore, this thesis aims to provide a method expressly tailored to the elicitation of behavioural requirements. The method will be supported by the goal setting strategy and its associated elements. In order to attain this aim, this thesis followed a qualitative research approach with experts, practitioners, and end-users who self-declared having problematic social networking usage and seeking help. This process includes literature reviews, focus group sessions, experts' and practitioners' interviews, user interviews, and analysis of extended survey comments. Research conducted resulted in reference checklists for common goal setting elements, a taxonomy of the negative life experiences associated with problematic usage, and users' perceptions of the use of technology to assist goal setting. The results of the studies helped to propose a method to support users in specifying their goal-setting design requirements. The thesis then evaluated the proposed method with representative users who self-declared having problematic social network usage. The evaluation aimed to investigate the method’s effectiveness, whether it covers all the goal-setting elements, and how communication should work between study participants