Don’t be shy now: Social media technologies for senior citizens
Luise Schmidt is 68 and has a heart complaint. She likes knitting and lives alone. Luise Schmidt is also a prototypical senior citizen: not a real person, but invented by Dr Michael John and his colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology FIR ST in Adlershof. With userbased procedures like these, the scientists intend to find out how man-machine interfaces, or so called graphic user interfaces, must be designed if they are to dispel the reservations that the elderly often have in the face of new technologies, and to encourage their social and multimedia interaction.
A quarter of 70 to 85 year olds – with brief exceptions like going shopping or taking a walk – spend the whole day at home. For people between 40 and 54, this is only 7%. Improved health care, better qualifications and good material security extend retirement, but also raise the risk of isolation. Using social media technologies to integrate people better, to organise their everyday activities with greater medical reliability and convenience are necessary tasks.
This subject is being researched e.g. by the Fraunhofer FIRST scientists in their projects “SmartSenior” and “SilverGame”. Their core question is: How can we make the medium internet more appealing and accessible to the elderly? With test groups of senior citizens, John and his colleagues had to clarify what technologies were accepted in the target group, how seniors use the internet, and what input media they prefer. The findings: The elderly want as little interaction as possible with technology, it should be “invisible”. The standard input medium is the TV remote.
“SilverGame” gives the elderly the opportunity of staging a virtual song or dance on the monitor or TV screen and at the same time of learning and exchanging facts on various subjects in online media. At audio or video conferences they can meet for joint activities despite their physical separation. To this end, the team headed by John develop and implement algorithms for speech recognition, gesture based navigation and motion capture, and support partners in system integration and system tests.
What integrated SmartSenior applications will look like in the domestic environment can be seen at a model home, fitted with this system in November 2010, in Potsdam, to the southwest of Berlin. The heart of these services takes the form of a networked flat screen TV. Data measured by motion, contact and temperature sensors installed everywhere in the home are collected and can be viewed on the screen. For this project, Fraunhofer FIRST developed new technologies for the integration and analysis of sensor data as well as innovative sensor based device and media controllers for medical and nonmedical applications. Moreover, the Institute is working on role based security technologies that protect user privacy and present overviews of what data are stored and what are transferred where.
by Rico Bigelmann
Link: www.first.fraunhofer.de