Lean thinking in dementia care through smart assistive technology: an evaluation

This chapter provides an analysis and evaluation of a community based project trialling the use of Smart Assistive Technologies (AT) for people with dementia and their families. The 12 month project was funded by Home and Community Care (HACC) Queensland and conducted by Alzheimer's Queensland and the University of Southern Queensland in the North Brisbane and Toowoomba areas

An embodied and ubiquitous e-coach for accompanying older adults towards a better lifestyle

The population of people age 65 or over is increasing especially inEurope [3]. Granting to this target population a longer and healthier life isparamount for the European Community. In the context of the H2020 EUfunded project“NESTORE”[11], an embodied and ubiquitous e-coach is beingdeveloped seeking to change the lifestyle of seniors in different domains ofwellbeing. NESTORE e-coach is known as a personalized embodied andubiquitous e-coach that plays three essential roles in elderly’s wellbeing: acoach, a friend and a companion. As a coach, NESTORE will give trainings andadvice following a wellbeing path that is proposed by experts in wellbeing. As afriend, this e-coach knows and understands the user. As a companion, this e-coach has the ability to detect the user’s emotion and aims at building empathywith the user based by providing support throughout their daily training.The NESTORE e-coach is based on three different intervention medium: amobile application, a chatbot and an embodied vocal assistant. These interfaceshave different forms, different capabilities and different visions. Users cancommunicate with the NESTORE e-coach through different interfaces exclu-sively, sequentially, concurrently and synergistically. The interaction can beinitiated from the user side to different interfaces and/or from the e-coach side.In this paper, we present the NESTORE’s full vision for building the threeessential roles of this e-coach which are: a coach, a companion and a friend forseniors. Furthermore, we explain the NESTORE system design, architecture,capabilities and how the different interfaces of this E-coach contribute to make amulti-modal system. Finally, we conclude our work with the state of this H2020project

The Easyline+ Project: Evaluation of a User Interface Developed to Enhance Independent Living of Elderly and Disabled people

This paper reports the usability evaluation of interfaces developed to enable elderly and disabled people interact remotely with kitchen appliances in the home to enhance their independent living. A number of evaluation exercises were undertaken throughout the project’s development, including user-participative workshops and focus groups. This paper focuses on the summative usability evaluation exercise, which comprised a laboratory-based study in a simulated home environment, with a view to determining the appropriateness of employing this approach with potentially vulnerable participants. The study involved 27 participants interacting with the user interface. Their behaviour was observed and recorded, and their interaction with the system was analysed. They were also given a post-session questionnaire, where their opinions of the usability of the interface were solicited. The results of the usability testing were positive, and insight has been gained into how products of this nature can be further improved. The experience of conducting laboratory-based studies with vulnerable users was positive and led to propose in this paper a set of guidelines for future work in evaluating usability for work in this domain