Target group and topic
Our primary target group is the elderly who are living in assisted homes. Many suffer from reduced psychomotor abilities. Our goal is to provide a form of interaction in order to give the elderly easy access to visual communication with the person of their choice using currently existing applications like Skype. Therefore, our topic is "Entertainment for the elderly".
Problem statement
Currently there are ca. 700.000 elderly in Norway, aged 67 years and above. Many live alone, and have very limited access to communication with their family members in abroad such as live video communication. At the same time, many have access to smartphones and tablets, but are unable to fully utilise the features available on the devices and are also unable to utilise the power of the internet. How can we use Arduino and tangible interaction to help the elderly have easy access to visual communication with their child or the person of their choice around the globe?
Data collection
We conducted an interview and a focus group during the data gathering process. Our interview was semi-structured and the interviewee were above the age of 60 and the same in our focus group. The focus group was more helpful to identify the wide range of problem among elderly people. After the initial data collection, we conducted three iterations of prototyping. To ensure that all design solutions were based on feedback from users, we went forward with a user-oriented design process.
Prototypes
After gathering of data and evaluating them, we came up with two low fidelity prototypes. One of them was a concept using tangible blocks representing contacts to be called, and could be placed on a base to place a video call… The other design was based on an old telephone. And again we evaluated our low-fidelity prototypes with the users to find out which one would be the easiest one for them and we carried on the best rated design from the users, which was the tangible blocks, to develop a high fidelity prototype.
We started building our high-fidelity prototype consisting of tangible blocks connecting to the Arduino Uno, the main component of our design (easyTalk). Additionally, we used two pushbuttons, an RFID reader, an RFID card, an RFID tag, and a LED diode. We used mostly the wood and laser cutting method to make our design.
The main idea of this user-oriented design is based on an easy to use telepresence system for the elderly to communicate with their loved ones. It is very easy to use, by just placing the blocks on the base, connected with RFID sensor, you can call a person in your call list. Each block represents a unique person that can be called, and placing the block on the base immediately places a video call to that person. And blinking of LED light gives feedback to show that the block has been correctly placed.
