Imparting digital skills to people aged 55 years and over in the UK

This research has been conducted by The Open University, UK and has been inspired by the authors’ association with Age UK Milton Keynes. Our aim has been to present a case for imparting digital skills to people aged over 55 years of age, and to present strategies, which partnerships of academic institutions, businesses, and organisations in the voluntary sector (e.g. Age UK, Carers UK) could take forward. Some of our recommendations include: •the need for more robust evidence for the efficiency and effectiveness of digital inclusion initiatives for their sustainability, cost-effectiveness, and their impact; •design of evidence-based training initiatives for digital inclusion of older people; •highlighting the significance of digital skills training of the ageing workforce; •aiming for digital competence in training initiatives so that people develop skills along with knowledge and attitudes – so that they can apply what they have learned to other emerging technologies, contexts, devices and platforms; •inter-generational digital inclusion initiatives; •improving and extending partnership working with the voluntary sector such as Age UK and Carers UK; •Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme(s) for senior managers on provding support to the older workforce (including carers and disabled people); •online learning programmes and/or certification for designers/content developers - training them on the accessible (inclusive) design of online services (including websites, smart phones or mobile interfaces) and smart spaces for an ageing society

Applying Mobile Application Development to Help Dementia and Alzheimer Patients

Caregiver anecdotes attest that music and photographs play an important role for family members diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), even those with severe AD. Tablets and iPads, which are prevalent, can be utilized with dementia patients in portraying favorite music and family photographs via apps developed in close partnership with geriatric facilities. This study addresses cognitive functioning and quality of life for people diagnosed with dementia via technology. Research has shown that technology instruments such as iPods, help stimulate those with dementia. This study focuses on innovative devices such as iPads and tablets, which are mainstream and easy to use, cannot only help determine stage of dementia, but also provide stimulation to improve cognitive functioning. It is hoped that this research will analyze that specially created apps and existing assistive software can be used to decrease the symptoms and improve cognition of older adults suffering from AD or other dementia related diseases. Via service-learning courses, students developed an easy-to-use application for tablets to help older adults with disabilities more readily use the technology. This research will discuss student developed mobile applications in the scope of helping improve the quality of life of patients with AD or dementia

Empowering cultural heritage professionals with tools for authoring and deploying personalised visitor experiences

This paper presents an authoring environment, which supports cultural heritage professionals in the process of creating and deploying a wide range of different personalised interactive experiences that combine the physical (objects, collection and spaces) and the digital (multimedia content). It is based on a novel flexible formalism that represents the content and the context as independent from one another and allows recombining them in multiple ways thus generating many different interactions from the same elements. The authoring environment was developed in a co-design process with heritage stakeholders and addresses the composition of the content, the definition of the personalisation, and the deployment on a physical configuration of bespoke devices. To simplify the editing while maintaining a powerful representation, the complex creation process is deconstructed into a limited number of elements and phases, including aspects to control personalisation both in content and in interaction. The user interface also includes examples of installations for inspiration and as a means for learning what is possible and how to do it. Throughout the paper, installations in public exhibitions are used to illustrate our points and what our authoring environment can produce. The expressiveness of the formalism and the variety of interactive experiences that could be created was assessed via a range of laboratory tests, while a user-centred evaluation with over 40 cultural heritage professionals assessed whether they feel confident in directly controlling personalisation

Getting Old And Technology

It is generally agreed upon that the purpose of technology is to aid humanity through various means like: making a task more convenient, or overcoming something previously deemed “impossible.” From the dawn of man to the era in which we stand, technology has steadily improved alongside civilization. This steady progress has seemingly hastened every year. Looking at technology from the viewpoint of “necessary everyday life tasks,” the past three decades have changed dramatically. With every year that passes, more things have become accessible through the web. Not everyone can keep pace with this rapid expansion into the “non-physical” digital world that hides beyond screens. One of these “left behind” groups is the elderly. This literature review’s purpose is to determine what exactly causes the elderly to fall behind in technological literacy. This investigation seeks to answer questions like, “what challenges arise that prevent the elderly from using new technology?” and “does the product’s design favor the young over the old?” The review aims to analyze various studies and determine specific and cross-cultural causes that the elderly face when interacting with technology

The discourse of a ‘smart’ technology: implications for educational practice

The term ‘smart’ has become widely and sometimes carelessly employed in relation to contemporary design. However, in certain areas of cultural practice it also has acquired a more specialised and focussed meaning. One such area is education. The present paper explores the discourse of smart as it is emerging in relation to both educational technologies and educational spaces. The characteristics of smart learning tools and smart sites for learning with such tools are defined in terms of their capability for organising regulative interactions. However, it is argued that these artefacts and these spaces cannot be fully productive unless they are enveloped by a framework of human intelligence and judgement. This locates the teacher has having an important, novel, and distinctive role in the management of smart education. The range of such responsibilities is illustrated and related to contemporary themes in the psychology of learnin

Toward the adoption of digital assistive technology: Factors affecting older people's initial trust formation

In recent decades, Europe has experienced a major societal challenge—the aging of the human population. The Finnish government has responded to this challenge by focusing on individually tailored services that enable older adults to live independently and comfortably at home for longer with the help of digital assistive technology. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study on how initial trust is formed with regard technology adoption by older people. Four bases of trust (personality, cognitive, calculative, and institutional) underpin the theoretical framework of the study. A qualitative research approach was adopted, utilizing individual and focus group interviews with older people living independently in urban and rural areas of South Finland. The findings derived from thematic analysis offer new insights into the complex and multidimensional process of older people's initial trust formation, which is affected by an interplay of 12 identified factors shaping the four bases of trust and four supplementary factors. These findings lead to propositions for future research

Co-refining interactive systems with older adults from function, form and interaction

Designing interactive systems that are pragmatic, attractive and easy to use for older adults is challenging. Participatory design, as an approach to enhance the mutual understanding between designers and end users, has been proved to be useful to improve the quality of design for older people. However, PD research has long been criticized for extensively dealing with the early-phase design while putting less emphasis on the later stages. In this paper, we argue for the importance of collaborative refinement when designing interactive systems for older adults. Through a case study, we describe our experience of co-refining the preliminary design of an interactive system with older participants from three perspectives: function, form and interaction. We also explored to adopt some potential PD methods and conclude by discussing the effectiveness of the chosen approach and methods

Envisioning the future village: the role of digital technology in supporting more inclusive visions in the neighbourhood planning process

This thesis presents the development of a digitally aided Collaborative Envisioning Framework, to support disenfranchised young people in contributing to a ‘shared vision’ of their community’s future. Drawing from the research areas of planning, design, collaboration and envisioning, this study sought to address the existing democratic deficit in local decision making activities, by utilising the new potentials of digital technologies. The research aim was to support communities, particularly disengaged young people, in becoming involved with decision-making activities, namely generating a shared vision for a neighbourhood plan. Since the radical policy changes to the National Planning Policy Framework and Localism Act 2011, members of the public have been handed increased responsibility and accountability in contributing to the local decisions affecting them. However, the tools and resources have been criticized for not engaging and including all sectors of the public, particularly young people (who arguably have the most to gain, or lose, as a result of decisions made). Using community and neighbourhood planning as a microcosm of a larger problem, this study looked towards the potentials of digital tools as a way to address this democratic deficit. To discover whether they offered anything more than existing tools, by helping young people to contribute to the generation of a ‘shared vision’ (a requisite of a neighbourhood planning application). It also addressed the assumption that the public had an understanding of what creating a ‘shared vision’ entailed, and had the skills and knowledge required to create one. It firstly identified envisioning as a design activity, which needs creativity, imagination, empathy, collaboration, communication and deliberation, and then identified ‘designable factors’ such as processes, tools (digital and non-digital), environments, and services which are able to support these, focusing on which were most suitable for the young audience. The research also explored behavior and motivation theories which guided the design of an envisioning framework. To achieve this aim, a constructive design research methodology was adopted consisting of a designed artefact - ‘The Collaborative Envisioning Framework’ which was utlised throughout numerous workshops. The interactions between the workshop participants and the envisioning framework generated multiple sets of qualitative data, which were analysed and interpreted to form the next iteration of the framework. The research demonstrates that existing tools and resources aimed at supporting inclusivity and meaningful visions for neighbourhood plans are not, in their current form, adequate to firstly, engage the diverse groups of people they should be including, and secondly, to support a generative, creative activity of envisioning, and suggests that the use of digital tools (namely Ageing Booth App, Morfo App, and Minecraft) offer something new. The original contributions to knowledge are: an advancement of constructive design research methodology; contributions to the discourse surrounding the purpose and value of visons within community planning; and a practical ‘Collaborative Envisioning Framework’ which can be followed by public sector and private organisations who seek to support communities in producing ‘visons’ for their community