Interactive Technologies for Elderly Care

Abstract: As the population is getting older, the demand for home care services is continuously increasing. According to industry forecasts, utilizing the current work methods in home care would probably not satisfy the future needs of older people. A few critical areas in home care are the daily visits and the nightly supervisions. To be able to provide these types of services in the future, some technical assistance may have to be utilized. The goal of this thesis was to research the field of home care services and develop technical solutions that can assist the older people and the future work within home care. An iterative design process consisting of three phases was used to support the process of designing solutions with the end users in mind. By utilizing methods like interviews, scenarios, prototypes, and usability evaluations the technical solutions could be designed and developed. The result of the design process was two user scenarios and one physical implementation. The first scenario, focusing on home care visits, resulted in a CRUD-based (create, read, update, delete) concept. The second scenario, focusing on nightly supervision, resulted in a system with integrated Internet of Things devices. This system was further evaluated in a final user test, conducted in a custom test environment. In conclusion, the thesis has shown that there is a possibility to both make home care less demanding for caregivers and more secure and integrity-based for older people. In the process of designing technical solutions for elderly care, both the attitude towards technology and the cognitive ability of the older person must be considered.