Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers focusing on informal care partners and people living with dementia often create personas, incorporating expectations about the pair's relationship dynamics to guide their research and design outcome. Similarly, in our two iterations of co-design workshops aimed at designing a robot to enhance these relationships, we started with expectation that care partners would primarily lead the relationship. This assumption guided the design of the co-design workshops, which included diary studies followed by co-design sessions with eight dyads. However, our results from reflexive thematic analysis challenge the initial view that relationship dynamics follow a single persona or outcome. Instead, the diversity in relationship dynamics led to multiple design outcomes, highlighting the need for HCI researchers to consider care dynamics when designing and conducting research studies for care partnerships. Researchers can structure and create iterative co-design workshops to accommodate these dynamics by incorporating ongoing reflection on the dyad’s relationship dynamics and the researchers’ influence throughout all co-design stages. This approach enhances researchers' ability to create more thoughtful and effective relationship technology.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714105
The uptake of digital technology by older adults and service-providers has been partly driven by the pandemic but more recently by the erosion of in-person services because of increasing austerity and a harsher global economic climate. Against the backdrop of the UK’s cost of living crisis, we examine technology used frequently within five older adults’ households. Through two rounds of in- terviews and participant diaries, we show benefits and struggles of participants’ costly technology use, reflecting on what ‘cost of living’ means when technology designed to simplify older peoples lives, encounters problems. For HCI practitioners, we provide evi- dence of how personal smart devices can be better tailored to help older adults support themselves both economically and practically, during the cost of living crisis. We propose avenues for future re- search and design that better support indirect costs and reflect on how personal devices can be made self-sustaining, integrated and repairable.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714012
Making activities have been shown to offer potential for inclusive access to digital literacy amongst marginalized groups, but research exploring such approaches with older adults is still scarce. Our study introduces an electronic-card-making workshop, co-developed with Japanese older women to foster engagement aligning with their purpose, physical and cognitive skills. The workshop was initially delivered to 14 women. Following initial success, 4 participants decided to deliver a second workshop, with the support of our team, for 15 local children. We present findings from both these workshops unpacking how women's motivation for engaging in eMaking revolved around the idea of sharing, both through displaying created artefacts and the transmission of knowledge, how their learning consolidated around implicit actions and was supported by the creation of escalation strategies when they felt that demands exceeded their level of proficiency. Based on our results, we propose guidelines for inclusive eMaking involving novice older women.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714234
Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in healthcare practices, due to its potential to support personalization, diagnostic and prediction, automatization, and increase effectiveness. In physiotherapy, most existing ML solutions suggest replacing the physiotherapist, neglecting the complexity of their skills and practice. We articulate an alternative to the design of ML technology for physiotherapy: one that emphasizes the relational aspects of the practice and offers personalized support to physiotherapists and patients alike. Based on domain studies and design explorations with physiotherapists, interaction designers and ML experts, we present 1) insights on physiotherapy's in-clinic and out-of-clinic looped structure, 2) opportunities and requirements to integrate ML in that loop, and 3) a conceptual interactive ML-based infrastructure that exploits those opportunities. Our work widens current ML developmental aims for physiotherapy, proposing a vision that encodes sustainable sociotechnical relationships in healthcare practices.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713823
Digital journaling offers a means for older adults to express themselves, document their lives, and engage in self-reflection, contributing to the maintenance of cognitive function and social connectivity. Although previous works have investigated the motivations and benefits of digital journaling for older adults, little technical support has been designed to offer assistance. We conducted a formative study with older adults and uncovered their encountered challenges and preferences for technical support. Informed by the findings, we designed a Large Language Model (LLM) empowered tool, JournalAIde, which provides vicarious experience, idea organization, sample text generation, and visual editing cues to enhance older adults’ confidence, writing ability, and sustained attention during digital journaling. Through a between-subjects study and a field deployment, we demonstrated the JournalAIde’s significant effectiveness compared to a baseline system in empowering older adults in digital journaling. We further investigated older adults' experiences and perceptions of LLM writing assistance.
As the global population ages, comprehensively assessing older adults' physical, cognitive, and social capacities is increasingly crucial for guiding care decisions and resource allocation. While technology shows promise in enhancing these assessments, there is limited understanding of how practitioners conduct such assessments and how they perceive and experience assessment technologies in real-world settings. This paper presents an exploratory study of the practices and experiences of practitioners in China’s Ability Assessment of Older Adults (AAOA), based on 28 on-site observations and in-depth interviews with eight assessors in a large southeastern city. Our findings reveal the adaptive workflows, strategies, and diverse challenges faced by assessors, highlighting the complexity, context-specificity, and collaborative nature of these processes. While grounded in China’s evolving healthcare system, these findings also resonate with broader global challenges in aging care, particularly in resource-constrained settings. Based on these insights, we propose implications for designing practical assessment technologies and considerations for better supporting assessors and older adults across care contexts.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714166
HCI research increasingly focuses on everyday life to inform technology design for older adults. Routines, a key aspect of everyday life, have been studied to contextualize technology use. Our work brings attention to understanding of routines around videoconferencing technology among older adults with cognitive concerns. We conducted a week-long study involving observations, interviews, and a modified diary study with six older adults with cognitive concerns who videoconference at least once a week. Our analysis revealed how routines helped people adapt to videoconferencing constraints, how participants navigated disruptions to their videoconferencing routines, and the kinds of routines that were more challenging to manage when faced disruptions. In the discussion, we describe why routines are particularly important to study and support for people with cognitive concerns, the importance of studying older adults’ routines to support technology use in HCI, and methods that can enrich HCI research by uncovering insights into routines.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3714207