Designing for technology acceptance of wearable and mobile technologies for senior citizen users

Technology offers many opportunities and advantages; however, the acceptance of these beneficial technologies is not universal among the population. In particular, it has been found that technology acceptance, and thus technology adoption, is relatively low among older adults as compared to younger adults, even though usage of digital products and services may vary widely from individual to individual. There is still an important population of older adults who could benefit from modern wearable sensing and monitoring technology, but who, at present, encounter barriers preventing them from taking full advantage of this potential.\u3cbr/\u3eThis paper discusses a case study in which 44 community-dwelling seniors tested a wearable activity tracker for a period of three months. Researchers took a critical theoretical reflection on factors of technology acceptance to identify barriers of technology acceptance by analysing quotes and observations collected from participants in biweekly workshops and cultural probes. By identifying observed barriers, this paper aims to formulate a set of participatory design (PD) strategies to address technology acceptance among senior citizens in order to inform future wearable and mobile technology development for senior citizens

Engaging senior adults with technology for behavior change

Amidst today’s ever-expanding waistlines there is a clear need to investigate technology’s potential to support behavior change and stimulate increased physical activity. Physical activity has also been shown to increase the independence and well-being of older adults, yet an important segment of this community is often excluded from the necessary in-context research due to the barriers they face to technology acceptance. Currently, there is limited knowledge on how to overcome these barriers to participation. We created a specific Product Service System that supports older adults to engage with the proposed technological interventions to enable important in-context behavior change research. Our approach converges knowledge from the domains of living laboratories, co-design, and existing experience of design research with older adults. From our experiences with this Product Service System, we provide guidelines to support other researchers setting-up a living laboratory study with older adults to explore technology’s potential to motivate behavior change

Identifying factors for personalized strategies to motivate seniors to adopt a more active lifestyle

\u3cp\u3ePurpose Sedentary lifestyles threaten the independence and wellbeing of the rapidly growing senior population1. This lack of physical activity contributes to symptoms of frailty2. Maintaining or increasing physical activity has many benefits3 and can increase senior independence3. The value of personal profiling (context of work, personal traits ...e tc.) according to personal drivers toward behavioral intention i s accepted. User profiling relates to the goal that the user aims to reach, while psychological factors relate to motivation towards behavior changes6. It is therefore necessary to investigate which profiling factors are important to create personalized motivational strategies for promotion of physical activities. Method In this observational study, community dwelling senior members of a local Dutch senior community center were asked to wear the Xiaomi Band step counters and record their daily activities in diary-like cultural probe with both open and closed questions. Personal trait information, including age, gender, their perceived age, perceived health, participant stage of change7 and their Regulatory Focus8, was collected at the beginning and end of the 3-month test period. Results & Discussion Of the 52 seniors initially recruited, 44 submitted diaries and 15 yielded complete step data. To explore the relationship between participant's personal traits and activities, a word search on the qualitative data from the diaries was done to find how often participants mentioned high, moderate and low intensity physical activity. The number of references which male and female participants made about these levels of physical activity was compared using a non-parametric test correlation analysis using Spearman's rho correlation efficient. With 95% confidence, this analysis implied that female participants undertook a higher diversity of physical activity in terms of intensity compared to male participants (Spearman's rho=0.878). This result suggests that gender is one important profiling factor concerning the promotion of physical activity. A similar analysis was conducted to examine the level of physical activity reported compared to participant's level of perceived health. This analysis indicated, with 99% confidence (Spearman's rho=0.698), that participants with higher perceived health undertook activities with more diverse levels of physical intensity. Further research is needed to see if health or self-efficacy could cause this correlation. In a linear regression analysis, no significant difference was found between the number of steps participants with a different regulatory focus8 (promotion or prevention) made. The number of steps participants completed was correlated with the months that the steps were taken in (February, March, or April). This could be possibly due to the improved weather and could suggest that personalized strategies addressing participant's environment or context can also increase motivation to physical activity.\u3c/p\u3

Personalizing motivational strategies

Design for behaviour change (BC) has the potential to motivate older\u3cbr/\u3eadults to increase their physical activity and enjoy the health benefits\u3cbr/\u3ehereof. Despite this potential, there is a lack of knowledge about how\u3cbr/\u3eto profile users, to most effectively personalize strategies, which is\u3cbr/\u3edetrimental to the overall effectiveness of these BC solutions. Thus we\u3cbr/\u3econducted a random control trial in which the effects of two BC\u3cbr/\u3estrategies, implemented in two otherwise similar mobile applications,\u3cbr/\u3eare compared. From the statistical analysis of the measured step data\u3cbr/\u3eand the collected survey data, we were able to create motivation\u3cbr/\u3eprofiles for BC by triangulating an individual’s contextual, behavioural\u3cbr/\u3eand psychological factors. Here we share an overview of our approach.\u3cbr/\u3eIn this way we aim to inform designers doing important work in the field\u3cbr/\u3eof BC toward increased physical activity

Towards personalized persuasive strategies for active ageing

\u3cbr/\u3eAs Europe is ageing, the healthcare system is experiencing dramatic strain. Increasing physical activities is important to promote independent living among seniors due to its impact in preventing chronic diseases and long-term care. Smart wearable technologies have been already developed to support citizens to be more physically active. However, the impact of these wearable technologies on seniors is still requires more research. Persuasive system design (PSD) strategies may be applied to motivate seniors to adopt a more active lifestyle. This paper examines 12 student team design concepts which aim to add values to one existing wearable product by redesigning the accompanying application to suit an elderly user group using the PSD principles. From clustering the resulting re-design concepts, we identified themes, suggesting values suitable for an elderly user group that aim to stimulate a more active lifestyle. Furthermore, we identified common persuasive principles applied to redesign concepts in each value theme so as to create design guidelines for active ageing lifestyle

Can technology adoption for older adults be co-created?

Technology can be very valuable to support older adults to remain healthy and active in their daily living. How to design technological product and service systems that will be adopted by older adults however still remains a challenge. This paper reports on an empirical study on how a co-creation ideation process can contribute to the technology adoption of older adults conducted in an EU project with multi-stakeholder teams with the aim of promoting physical activities of older adult citizens. This ideation process is adapted from Method A. By analyzing the co-creation ideation process from three different processes: the end user value-creation process, the stakeholder value-creation process and the encounter process in relation to the technology adoption process, i.e., the domestication adoption process, this paper demonstrates which technology adoption issues can be already addressed using this cocreation ideation process and which aspects still need to be taken further into account