Loneliness is a complex emotion that impacts upon an individual’s sense of social-relatedness, health and wellbeing. While a large amount of scholarship has tackled the issue of chronic loneliness, the issue of transient loneliness has thus far not received significant attention in academic research. In this position paper, we discuss the role that technology may play in ameliorating experiences of transient loneliness for individuals most at risk of it, and reflect on how technology can promote empathy for, and between, people who are temporarily separated from their loved ones and home communities. We outline a large-scale research project that involves collaboration across health and social psychology, the creative arts, design and HCI exploring these issues, and speculate upon new applications of social technologies that may enhance empathic relations between disparate groups and individuals

Barnett, Julie

Barreto, Manuela

Lawson, Shaun

Vines, John

Wilson, Michael

Northumbria Research Link

Citation: Lawson, Shaun, Vines, John, Wilson, Michael, Barnett, Julie and Barreto, Manuela (2014) Loneliness in  the Digital  Age:  Building Strategies for  Empathy and Trust.  In:  CHI 2014, 26 April-1 May 2014, Toronto, Canada. URL:  https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/empathy/files/2013/11/La... <https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/empathy/files/2013/11/Lawson_et_al.pdf>This  version  was  downloaded  from  Northumbria  Research  Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/38967/Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright ©  and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners.  Single copies of full items can be reproduced,  displayed or  performed,  and given to third parties in  any format  or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well  as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page.  The content must  not  be changed in any way. Full  items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without  formal  permission  of  the  copyright  holder.   The  full  policy  is  available  online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.htmlThis document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher’s website (a subscription may be required.) Loneliness in the Digital Age: Building Strategies for Empathy and Trust  Abstract Loneliness is a complex emotion that impacts upon an individual’s sense of social-relatedness, health and wellbeing. While a large amount of scholarship has tackled the issue of chronic loneliness, the issue of transient loneliness has thus far not received significant attention in academic research. In this position paper, we discuss the role that technology may play in ameliorating experiences of transient loneliness for individuals most at risk of it, and reflect on how technology can promote empathy for, and between, people who are temporarily separated from their loved ones and home communities. We outline a large-scale research project that involves collaboration across health and social psychology, the creative arts, design and HCI exploring these issues, and speculate upon new applications of social technologies that may enhance empathic relations between disparate groups and individuals.  Author Keywords Empathy; Trust; Loneliness. Introduction ‘Loneliness is a complex and usually unpleasant emotion which typically includes anxious feelings about a lack of connectedness or communality with others. As such, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by other people.’ [2, p.1]            Copyright remains with the author(s).  Shaun Lawson School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, UK slawson@lincoln.ac.uk  John Vines Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK john.vines@ncl.ac.uk  Mike Wilson School of Media and Performance, Falmouth University, Mike.Wilson@falmouth.ac.uk  Julie Barnett Department of Psychology, University of Bath, UK j.c.barnett@bath.ac.uk  Manuela Barreto College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK M.Barreto@exeter.ac.uk    Loneliness is one of the most significant challenges facing western society. In the UK, surveys over the last decade have regularly suggested that 1 in 10 people are ‘lonely’ while just under a million citizens experience loneliness on a chronic level [2]. Populations identified as “at risk” of loneliness are also often identified as been at risk of reduced wellbeing and emotional suffering [4]. The magnitude is such that loneliness is often identified as a contributing factor to ill health, premature mortality, and offending [5].  While a large body of work addresses issues of chronic loneliness, little attention has been played to the significance of transient episodes of loneliness and the role that empathy and trust formation play in ameliorating these feelings. Empathy and trust are both antecedents of loneliness as well as being worsened by it [1]. In this paper, we provide an overview of an interdisciplinary research programme that is examining how short spells of loneliness develop in the daily lives of individuals who are temporarily separated from their home community. We have set out to explore how we might design new interactive social technologies that support the formation of empathy between separated family members and community members, and thereby maintain individual and social wellbeing. Transient loneliness and separation In the health and psychology literature, loneliness is often framed as a ‘chronic’ condition. As such, research within health, psychology and HCI has focused on those groups identified most at risk of experiencing chronic forms of loneliness—such as older people (e.g. [11, 15]). While work in this area is clearly worthwhile, this does negate the significance that spells of loneliness can play in any person’s everyday life. This is particularly significant for individuals who find themselves in periods where they are temporarily separated from their relations, peers and social/community networks; this can include a diverse range of people such as migrant workers, offenders having to reintegrate back into society, workers posted to overseas locales and children and students starting at a new school, college or university. Empathy and trust are especially important to the types of groups that find themselves in these states of temporary separation. Let us take an imagined, but likely, story of a new ‘economic migrant’ moving from Bulgaria to the UK following the opening up of the EU borders (as described in our scenario in Figure 1). In Victor’s scenario, loneliness emerges, in part, as a consequence of being separated from family for a temporary but undefined period of time. But what is also significant here is the perceived strangeness of the new ‘land’ Victor finds himself in, and his sense that this new world works at a different pace compared to his life in Bulgaria. But perhaps more unsettling is that he frequently feels looked down on. He knows that there has been a huge amount of media coverage about new migrants like him arriving and ‘taking the jobs of hardworking British folk’ or just arriving to claim benefits from the state [9]. Importantly, Victor for the most part does not feel socially isolated or chronically lonely—however, loneliness emerges at transient moments when he dwells on the impressions others leave on him, and when he is unable to communicate with his family at the times he normally would do so. Social technologies for empathic relations The establishing of empathic relations might benefit Victor and his family at a number of levels and in multiple ways. His family in Bulgaria might benefit from having a greater awareness of his new routines and Victor moved the United Kingdom on the 1st of January 2014. This was the first day that the EU borders had ‘opened up’ and allowed him and his fellow Bulgarians to move to the UK to find work. While there had been a huge amount of mass-media coverage of a ‘tidal wave of immigration’, Victor was the only ‘new arrival’ on his plane to the UK. Arriving on his own, he left behind his fiancé and eight year-old son. For his first job he moved to a rural part of eastern England where he worked on farms picking fruits and vegetables during harvest. He lives in housing near the farm with 6 other workers—a fellow Bulgarian, two Romanians and three Polish men.   Victor is very busy in his new life. He wakes early and works until late. Working on the farm during the summer is hot and hard work.  He doesn’t find much time during his work days to ponder on his family left back home. He tries to call home at least once a week, but in his location he is restricted on his access to the Internet and computers so unable to use Skype. He shares a mobile phone with other migrants at his home—therefore, he has limited opportunities and credit to phone internationally and sending SMSs is just not practical.   Figure 1: Victor’s story  limited resources, and the associated restrictions this places on his time. He would benefit from being able to communicate his feelings and concerns back home in a structured and sensitive manner. Further, his relations with his temporary neighbors might benefit by establishing common ground and social bonds with the new communities within which they live.  The HCI community has been engaged in research for some time that has been addressing societal concerns of social isolation and loneliness in a number of contexts, but most especially around ageing (e.g. [14, 15]); again however this work has tended to concentrate on aspects of chronic and long term loneliness. Perhaps of more relevance to transient loneliness is work by the design, HCI and ubicomp communities that has seen the development of phatic technologies [13] and ‘remote hug’ devices [10]. This work however typically requires complex, bespoke mechatronic devices and systems; in order to fit in with Victor’s transient working life, and be economical to service and maintain, any new technological intervention would have to be cheap, robust and compact or realized as a software service. We therefore propose two possible design approaches to address loneliness in the lives of people such as Victor: Supporting inattentive attentiveness: A core component of some approaches to empathic practice is silence and active listening [7]. In contemporary forms, the dominant social media services and platforms lack sensitivity to the role that attentive silence and active listening can play in synchronous and asynchronous communication [6]—indeed, ‘silence’ is often portrayed negatively online, such as when you are not ‘endorsed’ on LinedIn, or not ‘liked’ on Facebook. Building on prior work of Wallace et al. [12], we will build a number of technology probes that support empathic dialogues between separated families and communities. These will probe the ways in which relatively simple digitally augmented artefacts, worn on the self, could support practices of remote active listening, relating and understanding. Crafting empathic digital identities: We are also exploring how social networking and media services could be enhanced by designing in tools for presenting online identities and conversing with others that may promote empathy. ‘Slow interaction’ [3] is a useful notion to build upon here, as it highlights the role of temporality in how people might ‘reach out’ to others and form new bonds with strangers. As such, we could expand upon work on delayed messaging services  (e.g [8]) and look at whether giving greater time to composing profiles and messages may lead to greater effort or consideration from those using them and thus improve the quality of interactions. For example, we might envisage how existing communication channels—SMS services on phones, voice and video messaging, micro-blogging and social media services—could be reconfigured to support people in carefully crafting a message over time by responding to timely and structured prompts. These may take temporarily separated individuals through a step-by-step process of learning to express their feelings in ways that facilitate empathy, and also support others to engage empathically with others. We can also envisage the ways that such careful crafting of an online identity could support relationship building and understanding with the new community being moved to.  Future work  What we have presented thus far is truly speculative and is a foundation for a three-year interdisciplinary  research project. During the project we aim to focus on three core examples of ‘temporarily separated’ groups who are: i) at risk of loneliness as a result of separation and ii) in a situation where the nature of their loneliness might be ameliorated by empathy. In working with such cases, we are particularly interested in how the constituents of empathy are different in different contexts and situations. For example, a case study with economic migrants where loneliness might be a result of cultural unfamiliarity and isolation from a foreign community would likely reveal highly different roles for empathy as compared to a member of military staff returning from deployment at war. At the same time, it is envisaged that there would be parallels and commonalities across such cases. Having identified a number of groups to work with, we will proceed through a work-plan comprising of: 1) Primary data collection to understand existing experiences of online loneliness (managed in the online or offline world) and offline loneliness (managed in the online or offline world) and how this relates to perceptions of social bonds. 2) Co-designing a number of prototype digital technologies with members of each case study group that support new modes of expressing empathy between participants, their home communities, and those residing in their temporary settings. 3) Developing models of creative practice to support the building of empathy-rich environments to support the management of transient and episoidic loneliness across and between community members.  References [1] Beadle, J., Brown, V., Keady, B., Tranel, D., and Paradiso, S. Trait empathy as a predictor of individual differences in perceived loneliness. Psychological reports, 110 (1), 3-15. [2] Beaumont, J. Measuring national well-being – Older people and loneliness 2013. ONS, London, 2013. [3] Hallnäs, L., and Redström, J. Slow technology – designing for reflection. Pers. Ubiq. Computing, 5 (3), 201-212. [4] Hole, K. Loneliness compendium: Examples from research and practice. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, London, 2011. [5] Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., and Layton, J. Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7 (7), e1000316. [6] Jin, B. How lonely people use and perceive Facebook. Comp. Hum. Behavior, 29 (3), 2463-2470. [7] Kacperek, L. Non-verbal communication: The importance of listening. Br. J Nursing, 6(5), 275-279. [8] Kim, H., et al. TimelyPresent: Connecting families across continents. IJHCS, 71 (10), 1003-1011/ [9] Murphy, S., and Avramova, M. Exposed: Bulgarian fixers tell new arrivals to UK... We will fake documents so you can claim benefits. http://tinyurl.com/pl74hyy [10] Vetere, F., Gibbs, M., Kjeldskov, J., Howard, S., Mueller, F., Pedell, S., Mecoles, K., and Bunyan, M. Mediating intimacy: Designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships. In: Proc. CHI ’05, ACM, 471-480. [11] Victor, C., and Yang, K. The prevalence of loneliness among adults: A case study of the United Kingdom. The J. Psychology. 146 (1-2), 85-104. [12] Wallace, J., et al. A design-led enquiry into personhood in dementia. In: Proc. CHI  ’13, 2617-2626. [13] Wang, V., Tucker, J., and Haines, K. Phatic technologies in modern society. Technology in society, 34 (1), 84-93. [14] Wherton, J., and Prendergast, D. The building bridges project: Involving older adults in the design of a communication technology to support peer-to-peer social engagement. LNCS 5889, 111-134. [15] Wiley, J., Sung, J., and Abowd, G. The message centere: Enhancing elder communication. In: Proc. CHI ’06 EA, 1523-152. 

Loneliness in the Digital Age: Building Strategies for Empathy and Trust

Northumbria Research Link
Citation: Lawson, Shaun, Vines, John, Wilson, Michael, Barnett, Julie and Barreto, Manuela (2014) 
Loneliness in the Digital Age: Building Strategies for Empathy and Trust. In: CHI 2014, 26 April-1 May  
2014, Toronto, Canada. 
URL:  https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/empathy/files/2013/11/La... 
<https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/empathy/files/2013/11/Lawson_et_al.pdf>
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Loneliness in the Digital Age: Building 
Strategies for Empathy and Trust
 
 
Abstract 
Loneliness is a complex emotion that impacts upon an 
individual’s sense of social-relatedness, health and 
wellbeing. While a large amount of scholarship has 
tackled the issue of chronic loneliness, the issue of 
transient loneliness has thus far not received significant 
attention in academic research. In this position paper, 
we discuss the role that technology may play in 
ameliorating experiences of transient loneliness for 
individuals most at risk of it, and reflect on how 
technology can promote empathy for, and between, 
people who are temporarily separated from their loved 
ones and home communities. We outline a large-scale 
research project that involves collaboration across 
health and social psychology, the creative arts, design 
and HCI exploring these issues, and speculate upon 
new applications of social technologies that may 
enhance empathic relations between disparate groups 
and individuals.  
Author Keywords 
Empathy; Trust; Loneliness. 
Introduction 
‘Loneliness is a complex and usually unpleasant 
emotion which typically includes anxious feelings about 
a lack of connectedness or communality with others. As 
such, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by 
other people.’ [2, p.1] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright remains with the author(s). 
 
Shaun Lawson 
School of Computer Science, 
University of Lincoln, UK 
slawson@lincoln.ac.uk 
 
John Vines 
Culture Lab, 
Newcastle University, UK 
john.vines@ncl.ac.uk 
 
Mike Wilson 
School of Media and Performance, 
Falmouth University, 
Mike.Wilson@falmouth.ac.uk 
 
Julie Barnett 
Department of Psychology, 
University of Bath, UK 
j.c.barnett@bath.ac.uk 
 
Manuela Barreto 
College of Life and Environmental 
Sciences, 
University of Exeter, UK 
M.Barreto@exeter.ac.uk 
 
 
 
Loneliness is one of the most significant challenges 
facing western society. In the UK, surveys over the last 
decade have regularly suggested that 1 in 10 people 
are ‘lonely’ while just under a million citizens 
experience loneliness on a chronic level [2]. Populations 
identified as “at risk” of loneliness are also often 
identified as been at risk of reduced wellbeing and 
emotional suffering [4]. The magnitude is such that 
loneliness is often identified as a contributing factor to 
ill health, premature mortality, and offending [5].  
While a large body of work addresses issues of chronic 
loneliness, little attention has been played to the 
significance of transient episodes of loneliness and the 
role that empathy and trust formation play in 
ameliorating these feelings. Empathy and trust are both 
antecedents of loneliness as well as being worsened by 
it [1]. In this paper, we provide an overview of an 
interdisciplinary research programme that is examining 
how short spells of loneliness develop in the daily lives 
of individuals who are temporarily separated from their 
home community. We have set out to explore how we 
might design new interactive social technologies that 
support the formation of empathy between separated 
family members and community members, and thereby 
maintain individual and social wellbeing. 
Transient loneliness and separation 
In the health and psychology literature, loneliness is 
often framed as a ‘chronic’ condition. As such, research 
within health, psychology and HCI has focused on those 
groups identified most at risk of experiencing chronic 
forms of loneliness—such as older people (e.g. [11, 
15]). While work in this area is clearly worthwhile, this 
does negate the significance that spells of loneliness 
can play in any person’s everyday life. This is 
particularly significant for individuals who find 
themselves in periods where they are temporarily 
separated from their relations, peers and 
social/community networks; this can include a diverse 
range of people such as migrant workers, offenders 
having to reintegrate back into society, workers posted 
to overseas locales and children and students starting 
at a new school, college or university. 
Empathy and trust are especially important to the types 
of groups that find themselves in these states of 
temporary separation. Let us take an imagined, but 
likely, story of a new ‘economic migrant’ moving from 
Bulgaria to the UK following the opening up of the EU 
borders (as described in our scenario in Figure 1). In 
Victor’s scenario, loneliness emerges, in part, as a 
consequence of being separated from family for a 
temporary but undefined period of time. But what is 
also significant here is the perceived strangeness of the 
new ‘land’ Victor finds himself in, and his sense that 
this new world works at a different pace compared to 
his life in Bulgaria. But perhaps more unsettling is that 
he frequently feels looked down on. He knows that 
there has been a huge amount of media coverage 
about new migrants like him arriving and ‘taking the 
jobs of hardworking British folk’ or just arriving to claim 
benefits from the state [9]. Importantly, Victor for the 
most part does not feel socially isolated or chronically 
lonely—however, loneliness emerges at transient 
moments when he dwells on the impressions others 
leave on him, and when he is unable to communicate 
with his family at the times he normally would do so. 
Social technologies for empathic relations 
The establishing of empathic relations might benefit 
Victor and his family at a number of levels and in 
multiple ways. His family in Bulgaria might benefit from 
having a greater awareness of his new routines and 
Victor moved the United Kingdom 
on the 1st of January 2014. This was 
the first day that the EU borders 
had ‘opened up’ and allowed him 
and his fellow Bulgarians to move to 
the UK to find work. While there 
had been a huge amount of mass-
media coverage of a ‘tidal wave of 
immigration’, Victor was the only 
‘new arrival’ on his plane to the UK. 
Arriving on his own, he left behind 
his fiancé and eight year-old son. 
For his first job he moved to a rural 
part of eastern England where he 
worked on farms picking fruits and 
vegetables during harvest. He lives 
in housing near the farm with 6 
other workers—a fellow Bulgarian, 
two Romanians and three Polish 
men.  
 
Victor is very busy in his new life. 
He wakes early and works until late. 
Working on the farm during the 
summer is hot and hard work.  He 
doesn’t find much time during his 
work days to ponder on his family 
left back home. He tries to call 
home at least once a week, but in 
his location he is restricted on his 
access to the Internet and 
computers so unable to use Skype. 
He shares a mobile phone with 
other migrants at his home—
therefore, he has limited 
opportunities and credit to phone 
internationally and sending SMSs is 
just not practical.  
 
Figure 1: Victor’s story 
 
limited resources, and the associated restrictions this 
places on his time. He would benefit from being able to 
communicate his feelings and concerns back home in a 
structured and sensitive manner. Further, his relations 
with his temporary neighbors might benefit by 
establishing common ground and social bonds with the 
new communities within which they live.  
The HCI community has been engaged in research for 
some time that has been addressing societal concerns 
of social isolation and loneliness in a number of 
contexts, but most especially around ageing (e.g. [14, 
15]); again however this work has tended to 
concentrate on aspects of chronic and long term 
loneliness. Perhaps of more relevance to transient 
loneliness is work by the design, HCI and ubicomp 
communities that has seen the development of phatic 
technologies [13] and ‘remote hug’ devices [10]. This 
work however typically requires complex, bespoke 
mechatronic devices and systems; in order to fit in with 
Victor’s transient working life, and be economical to 
service and maintain, any new technological 
intervention would have to be cheap, robust and 
compact or realized as a software service. We therefore 
propose two possible design approaches to address 
loneliness in the lives of people such as Victor: 
Supporting inattentive attentiveness: A core component 
of some approaches to empathic practice is silence and 
active listening [7]. In contemporary forms, the 
dominant social media services and platforms lack 
sensitivity to the role that attentive silence and active 
listening can play in synchronous and asynchronous 
communication [6]—indeed, ‘silence’ is often portrayed 
negatively online, such as when you are not ‘endorsed’ 
on LinedIn, or not ‘liked’ on Facebook. Building on prior 
work of Wallace et al. [12], we will build a number of 
technology probes that support empathic dialogues 
between separated families and communities. These 
will probe the ways in which relatively simple digitally 
augmented artefacts, worn on the self, could support 
practices of remote active listening, relating and 
understanding. 
Crafting empathic digital identities: We are also 
exploring how social networking and media services 
could be enhanced by designing in tools for presenting 
online identities and conversing with others that may 
promote empathy. ‘Slow interaction’ [3] is a useful 
notion to build upon here, as it highlights the role of 
temporality in how people might ‘reach out’ to others 
and form new bonds with strangers. As such, we could 
expand upon work on delayed messaging services  (e.g 
[8]) and look at whether giving greater time to 
composing profiles and messages may lead to greater 
effort or consideration from those using them and thus 
improve the quality of interactions. For example, we 
might envisage how existing communication channels—
SMS services on phones, voice and video messaging, 
micro-blogging and social media services—could be 
reconfigured to support people in carefully crafting a 
message over time by responding to timely and 
structured prompts. These may take temporarily 
separated individuals through a step-by-step process of 
learning to express their feelings in ways that facilitate 
empathy, and also support others to engage 
empathically with others. We can also envisage the 
ways that such careful crafting of an online identity 
could support relationship building and understanding 
with the new community being moved to.  
Future work  
What we have presented thus far is truly speculative 
and is a foundation for a three-year interdisciplinary 
 
research project. During the project we aim to focus on 
three core examples of ‘temporarily separated’ groups 
who are: i) at risk of loneliness as a result of separation 
and ii) in a situation where the nature of their 
loneliness might be ameliorated by empathy. In 
working with such cases, we are particularly interested 
in how the constituents of empathy are different in 
different contexts and situations. For example, a case 
study with economic migrants where loneliness might 
be a result of cultural unfamiliarity and isolation from a 
foreign community would likely reveal highly different 
roles for empathy as compared to a member of military 
staff returning from deployment at war. At the same 
time, it is envisaged that there would be parallels and 
commonalities across such cases. 
Having identified a number of groups to work with, we 
will proceed through a work-plan comprising of: 1) 
Primary data collection to understand existing 
experiences of online loneliness (managed in the online 
or offline world) and offline loneliness (managed in the 
online or offline world) and how this relates to 
perceptions of social bonds. 2) Co-designing a number 
of prototype digital technologies with members of each 
case study group that support new modes of expressing 
empathy between participants, their home 
communities, and those residing in their temporary 
settings. 3) Developing models of creative practice to 
support the building of empathy-rich environments to 
support the management of transient and episoidic 
loneliness across and between community members.  
References 
[1] Beadle, J., Brown, V., Keady, B., Tranel, D., and 
Paradiso, S. Trait empathy as a predictor of individual 
differences in perceived loneliness. Psychological reports, 
110 (1), 3-15. 
[2] Beaumont, J. Measuring national well-being – Older 
people and loneliness 2013. ONS, London, 2013. 
[3] Hallnäs, L., and Redström, J. Slow technology – 
designing for reflection. Pers. Ubiq. Computing, 5 (3), 201-
212. 
[4] Hole, K. Loneliness compendium: Examples from 
research and practice. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 
London, 2011. 
[5] Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., and Layton, J. Social 
relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. 
PLoS Medicine, 7 (7), e1000316. 
[6] Jin, B. How lonely people use and perceive Facebook. 
Comp. Hum. Behavior, 29 (3), 2463-2470. 
[7] Kacperek, L. Non-verbal communication: The 
importance of listening. Br. J Nursing, 6(5), 275-279. 
[8] Kim, H., et al. TimelyPresent: Connecting families 
across continents. IJHCS, 71 (10), 1003-1011/ 
[9] Murphy, S., and Avramova, M. Exposed: Bulgarian 
fixers tell new arrivals to UK... We will fake documents so 
you can claim benefits. http://tinyurl.com/pl74hyy 
[10] Vetere, F., Gibbs, M., Kjeldskov, J., Howard, S., 
Mueller, F., Pedell, S., Mecoles, K., and Bunyan, M. 
Mediating intimacy: Designing technologies to support 
strong-tie relationships. In: Proc. CHI ’05, ACM, 471-480. 
[11] Victor, C., and Yang, K. The prevalence of loneliness 
among adults: A case study of the United Kingdom. The J. 
Psychology. 146 (1-2), 85-104. 
[12] Wallace, J., et al. A design-led enquiry into 
personhood in dementia. In: Proc. CHI  ’13, 2617-2626. 
[13] Wang, V., Tucker, J., and Haines, K. Phatic 
technologies in modern society. Technology in society, 34 
(1), 84-93. 
[14] Wherton, J., and Prendergast, D. The building bridges 
project: Involving older adults in the design of a 
communication technology to support peer-to-peer social 
engagement. LNCS 5889, 111-134. 
[15] Wiley, J., Sung, J., and Abowd, G. The message 
centere: Enhancing elder communication. In: Proc. CHI ’06 
EA, 1523-152. 


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