User Centered Design for Independent Living

From Capsil Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Disclaimer: This Wiki is a work in progress and it has not yet been evaluated through a process of external review. No responsibility is accepted for errors or omissions or for any loss or damages which may result from the use of the information contained in the Wiki.

Contents

Introduction

As indicated by C. Magnusson in “Enaction and Enactive Interfaces: a Handbook of Terms” [1], User Centered Design can be defined as “an approach to guarantee the usability of interactive systems, by actively involving the end-user”. This means that the main focus in User Centered Design is on interaction and on end-users’ needs and skills. In the case of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), systems should be designed for different classes of end-users having different needs and skills.

Such different classes include:

  • Elders or impaired people - Needing for e.g. support for therapy, support in daily activities, self-monitoring, systems helping them in overcoming specific impairments, flexible systems adapting to user’s functional limitations; it is particularly important that systems can be transparent to the user;
  • Caregivers - E.g. systems for daily monitoring of physiological signals, including alarms in case of possible dangers;
  • Clinicians - E.g. systems for periodical monitoring of specific medical data supporting evaluation of advancement of the pathological conditions and response to therapy; filtering of large amounts of data in order to focus attention on relevant aspects.

These requirements can be satisfied by a system whose interfaces adapt to the different kind of end-users. In Human Computer Interaction HCI the user interface is the part of the program that is directly in contact with humans, i.e., it is the part of the application which is most responsible of usability and interaction. The design of the interfaces plays a key role in the access to technology and in its comprehension. In AAL interfaces have to be particularly simple, adaptable, intuitive as defined by Baerentsen: “An intuitive interface may be defined as an interface, which is immediately understandable to all users, without the need neither for special knowledge by the user not the initiation of special educational measures”. To this aim, interfaces can exploit several communication channels and human mechanisms of non-verbal communication. In other words, AAL systems need adaptable and intuitive multimodal interfaces.

Usability in AAL has a crucial role and for the seniors it is strongly related to their functional limitations. The experience of interaction with a computer can be compromised, for example, by reduced cognitive and /or motoric capabilities as a consequence of diseases affecting elder people. On the one hand, a bad design of an application can hurt the elder user until to inducting computer anxiety, rejection of the technology, perception of isolation with respect to the society, and depression. On the other hand, a good design of the interface can encourage the elder in technology usage highlighting the benefices as to improve mental and physical wellbeing and to enhance the social connection and consciousness. Furthermore, a good design can also compensate some of the functional limitations, for example by means of multimodal interaction i.e., analyzing the multimodal communication of humans (e.g voice and gestures) and producing multimodal feedback (e.g. acoustic and visual).

Issues

There are many aspects to consider in the design of an interface for independent living, from limitations in cognitive, motoric and audio-visual abilities of elder people, to the interaction with different categories of subjects (seniors, clinicians and so on). In particular a user centered interface for AAL needs:

  • Novel multimodal interfaces and novel behavior descriptors to monitor more carefully elder patients.
  • Novel approaches for rehabilitation exercises based on « aesthetical resonance » paradigms. The aim is to develop interactive therapeutic exercises based on multimodal interaction and interactive multimedia (audiovisual) stimulation in real-time.
  • A better support, especially for clinicians, by automated quantitative and qualitative measures of the evolution over time of the therapy and/or the performance of motor tasks.
  • Novel paradigms of interaction that allow to simplify the interaction with home systems and devices and/or to support social interaction, e.g., with new possibilities to exchange experiences or enjoy the time (see for details Social Connectedness).

Functional limitations

The design of interfaces for elder users should consider the well known limitations of motoric response and the sensory-perceptual process. For example, a correct design of the position and size of icons can improve performance in the reaching problem, a common problem also for children. There are a number of studies on this topic, here we report just an overview on some functional limitations. It is important to highlight that at the time being elders have not the same expertise in using technologies than younger people, and that in some cases they do not have any experience at all. Functional limitations that need to be taken into account in designing interfaces include:

  1. Visual ability. Excluding singular ocular pathology, elder people shows a reduction of dynamic visual acuity, a reduction in the range of visual accommodation and, finally, reduction in colour sensitivity. Usually, there is a loss of contrast sensitivity and dark adaptation.
  2. Auditory ability. In subject over 60 there is a decline in auditory acuity, i.e. in the sensitivity for pure tones and high frequency tones. There are problems in localizing sound and binocular hearing.
  3. Motoric impairments. Limitations in motoric skills include:
    1. slower response;
    2. reduction in ability to maintain continuous movement;
    3. reduction in coordination and in balance (usually, this is a consequence of the before-mentioned limitations);
    4. loss of flexibility.
  4. Cognitive process decline, e.g. limitation of the attention or difficult in remembering information ( for examples see Dementia )…


Enabling Technologies

Research

The research effort on centered design for independent living up to now is mainly devoted to create solution for remote monitoring of seniors at home or to allow self monitoring. For a generalized overview on the research activities there is the Institute for Human Centre Design [2] that tries to support the community and disseminate results. A good example of software platform that address the requirements of flexibility, adaptability, and multimodality of a system and its interface is the EyesWeb Mobile application developed by InfoMus Lab [3] – DIST - University of Genova.

A parallel approach is related to the design of multi-functional Robotic systems, able to supply daily assistance on health-support and daily life activities (DLA). These Robotic systems are design to interact with humans using high level information, that means such Robots can sense Kansei factors from humans and try to use the same communication channel for communicating with humans (Robotics).


  • EyesWeb XMI Server and EywRAD client [4]

The EyesWeb XMI server exploits the EyesWeb XMI open platform and the EyesWeb Expressive Gesture Processing Library to provide services related to multimodal, including physiological, signals. EyesWeb XMI manages the real-time synchronization of multimodal streams of data having different clocks. The EyesWeb XMI server can thus analyze simultaneously, and in a transparent way for the user, signals from a wide range of devices (e.g., video cameras, microphones, physiological sensors, shock sensors, accelerometers). As a result from such analysis, the EyesWeb XMI server can provide in real time metadata related to embodiment, expressivity, and gesture. The EyesWeb Mobile client is an application for both desktop computers and mobile devices running Windows Mobile operating system. In its current form, it is a user interface for the remote control of EyesWeb applications running on EyesWeb XMI servers. The EyesWeb Mobile client can support the transmission of the sensor inputs available on the mobile device (e.g., webcam, audio input, accelerometers, gps, etc.) and can also exploit EyesWeb services to perform some processing of such data on the mobile device itself (this may reduce the data to be transmitted, with benefit e.g. in battery duration in the mobile). The EyesWeb Mobile client comes with a design and authoring tool that enables users to draw the user interface for a specific EyesWeb XMI patch. The designer tool enables the design and implementation of user interfaces to control one or more EyesWeb XMI patches, using simple commands and widgets, and to have a simple visualization of complex data or video streams. Using these technologies it is possible to access to an unique application in different way (i.e. using Palm or monitor or mobile phones) and/or looking to different data set In this way for example a clinician can check all the medical parameters and the subject can access to just to the subset he/she can understood.

  • Adaptive Environments [5]

Adaptive Environments, Institute for Human Centre Design, is an international non-profit organization, based in Boston. Its activities are mainly devoted to promote design that works for everyone across the spectrum of ability and age and to enhance human experience. Adaptive Environments provides easy access to information and guidance about the civil rights laws and codes that provide a bedrock of accessibility in the US. Adaptive Environments provides education and consultation about strategies, precedents and best practices that go beyond legal requirements to design places, things, communication and policy that integrate solutions to the reality of human diversity.


Commercial

The commercial solution are more oriented to the health monitoring or home care. Examples are:


References

  1. ↑ Enactive Network Partners,“Enaction and Enactive Interfaces: a Handbook of Terms" In A. Luciani and C. Cadoz (eds.), Enactive Systems Books, Grenoble, 2007; ISBN 978-2-9530856-0-0
  2. ↑ http://www.adaptenv.org/
  3. ↑ http://www.infomus.org
  4. ↑ http://www.eyesweb.org
  5. ↑ http://www.adaptiveenvironments.org/

Navigation

Retrieved from "http://capsil.org/capsilwiki/index.php/User_Centered_Design_for_Independent_Living"