DREAM (MSCA RISE)

In this paper we aim at understanding if and how, by analysing people’s profile and historical data (such as data available on Facebook profiles and interactions, or collected explicitly) we can motivate two persons to interact and eventually create long-term bonds. We do this by exploring the relationship between connectedness, social interactions and common life points on Facebook. The results are of particular importance for the development of technology that aims at reducing social isolation for people with less chances to interact, such as older adults.

In this paper, we report an extensive analysis that we performed in two scenarios where the care relation between doctor and patients are mediated by the relatives of the patients: Pediatric Palliative Care (PPC) and Nursing Homes (NH). When the patients are children or very old adults in the end of life, the provision of care often involve a family caregiver as the main point of contact for the health service. PPC and NH are characterized by emotional complexity, since incurable diseases expose the family caregivers to heavy careload and human distress. In this paper, we discuss our findings with a novel perspective, focusing on: information, coordination and social challenges that arise by dealing with such contexts, the existing technology as it is appropriated today to cope with them, and what we, as software researchers, can do to develop the right solutions.

The distinct abilities of older adults to interact with comput- ers has motivated a wide range of contributions in the the form of design guidelines for making technologies usable and accessible for the elderly population. However, despite the growing effort by the research community, the adoption of guidelines by developers and designers has been scant or not properly translated into more accessible interaction systems. In this paper we explore this issue by reporting on a qual- itative outcomes of a systematic review of 204 research- derived design guidelines for touchscreen applications. We report first on the different definitions of “elderly" and assess the reliability, organization and accessibility of the guidelines. Then we present our early attempt at facilitating the reporting and access of such guidelines to researchers and practitioners.

Social isolation and loneliness have a strong negative impact on health and happiness. The correlation is present at all ages, but the risk of loneliness and isolation is particularly high in later life and when transitioning to residential care settings, where keeping in touch with the family, making new friends and integrating with the community in a new social context can be very challenging. In this note we report on our preliminary studies on the opportunity and feasibility of using custom, printed magazines for increasing feelings of connectedness and promoting meaningful interactions in nursing homes. The content and layout for the magazine are generated in an automatic or semi-automatic way and emphasize aspects that could lead to discovering connections or starting conversations. Initial findings point to the potential for such a magazine and lead to content guidelines that we elaborate in the paper.

In this paper we describe the design of a reminiscence-based social interaction tool, namely Collegamenti, that aims at stimulating conversations and a sense of mutual awareness in residential care. Unlike previous work, Collegamenti focuses on stimulating the different types of relationships that are relevant to the quality of life in residential care: interactions with primary family caregivers, contacts with the larger family, friendships with peer residents and interactions with the nursing home staff. We explore the needs and challenges of this scenario in terms of social interactions but also in terms of how to make the technology sustainable and well integrated with care practices and initiatives, and report on the findings from the qualitative studies and concept validation.

In this paper we draw attention to the challenges of managing software projects for vulnerable populations, i.e., people potentially exposed to harm or not capable of protecting their own interests. The focus on human aspects, and particularly, the inclusion of human-centered approaches, has been a popular topic in the software engineering community. We argue, however, that current literature provides little understanding and guidance on how to approach these type of scenarios. Here, we shed some light on the topic by reporting on our experiences in developing innovative solutions for the residential care scenario, outlining potential issues and recommendations.

In this paper we explore the feasibility and design challenges in supporting co-located and virtual social interactions in residential care by building on the practice of reminiscence. Motivated by the challenges of social interaction in this context, we first explore the feasibility of a reminiscence-based social interaction tool designed to stimulate conversation in residential care with different stakeholders. Then, we explore the design challenges in supporting an assisting role in co-located reminiscence sessions, by running pilot studies with a technology probe. Our findings point to the feasibility of the tool and the willingness of stakeholders to contribute in the process, although with some skepticism about virtual interactions. The reminiscence sessions showed that compromises are needed when designing for both story collection and conversation stimulation, evidencing specific design areas where further exploration is needed.

Friendships and social interactions are renown contributors to wellbeing. As such, keeping a healthy amount of relationships becomes very important as people age and the size of their social network tends to decrease. In this paper, we take a step back and explore reconnection –find out about or re-contact old friends, an emerging topic due to the increased use of computer-mediated technology by older adults to maintain friendships and form new ones. We report on our findings from semi-structured interviews with 28 individuals from Costa Rica and Poland. The interviews aimed to explore whether there is a wish to reconnect, and the challenges encountered by older adults to reconnect. We contribute with design considerations for tools allowing older adults to reconnect, discussing opportunities for technology.

Social participation is known to bring great benefits to the health and well-being of people as they age. From being in contact with others to engaging in group activities, keeping socially active can help slow down the effects of age-related declines and reduce risks of loneliness and social isolation and even mortality in old age. There are unfortunately a variety of barriers that make it difficult for older adults to engage in social activities on a regular basis. In this chapter, we give an overview of the challenges to social participation and discuss how technology can help overcome these barriers and promote participation in social activities. We examine two particular research threads and designs, exploring ways in which technology can support colocated and virtual participation: (i) an application that motivates the virtual participation in group training programs and (ii) a location-based game that supports colocated intergenerational ICT training classes. We discuss the effectiveness and limitations of various design choices in the two use cases and outline the lessons learned.

In this work-in-progress paper we discuss the challenges in identifying effective and scalable crowd-based strategies for designing content, conversation logic, and meaningful metrics for a reminiscence chatbot targeted at older adults. We formalize the problem and outline the main research questions that drive the research agenda in chatbot design for reminiscence and for relational agents for older adults in general.

Having a sense of purpose is one of the tenets of well-being, at any age. Here, the authors review technologies that could help older adults remain active in society – in particular, those who can’t leave their home regularly or easily. The authors also discuss areas that current research and practice haven’t yet addressed satisfactorily.

The distinct abilities of older adults to interact with touchscreen devices have motivated a wide range of contributions in the form of design guidelines, which aim at informing the design for the aging population. However, despite the growing effort by the research community, many challenges still remain in translating these research findings into actionable design guidelines, with reports hinting scant adoption or implementation issues, which ultimately hurt the development of more accessible interactive systems. In this systematic literature review, we look at the research-derived design guidelines that set the foundation for design guideline compilations and standards, analyzing the aforementioned issues from the perspective of experts trying to discover, classify, and evaluate the work on the area of touchscreen design guidelines for older adults. The review analyses 52 research articles resulting in 434 research-derived design guidelines for touchscreen applications. These guidelines are analyzed using a taxonomy that considered the older adults ability evolution and the design aspects that are the target of the recommendations. The results point to the use of different definition of older adults, which go as early as 55+, with the design of displays and interaction styles to accommodate to vision and dexterity declines as the most prominent areas of research. However, proposed guidelines and recommendations were validated in only 15% of articles analyzed. The analysis also revealed that identifying guidelines and characterizing their focus in terms of ability declines and design aspects addressed is a demanding activity and prone to error, given the quality of reporting and details offered in research articles.

In this paper we explore the challenges and opportunities of designing information systems in healthcare with an emphasis on informational needs of family caregivers and work practices of professionals. We focus particularly on the context of Nursing Homes (NH), where family members and care professionals are often faced with challenging situations that can affect their ability to communicate and collaborate effectively, and thus, leading to the episodes of conflicts or mismatch of expectations. We report on two sets of user studies with staff and residents’ family members in four nursing homes, studying current information practices, factors that influence them, and explore design alternatives that could target identified issues.

Background: Intergenerational relationships are beneficial for both grandparents and grandchildren. A positive grandparent-grandchild relationship can improve the psychological well-being of older adults and be a source of social support, family history, and identity development. Maintaining meaningful interactions can be, however, a challenging endeavor, especially as life events lead to relocating geographically. Grandparents and grandchildren can have different preferences in terms of communication mediums and different assumptions about the real conversational needs of the other. Objective: In this study, we will investigate the feasibility and effect of sharing memories of older adults with their grandchildren in social media. This intervention focuses on bringing snippets of the lives of the grandparents into the grandchildren’s social media feed and analyzing the potential effect on relational quality, relational investment, and conversational resources from the perspective of the grandchildren. Methods: A randomized controlled trial will be used to measure the effectiveness of sharing family memories through social media on intergenerational relationships from the perspective of the grandchildren. The study will be implemented in Mongolia among 60 grandparent-grandchild pairs who will be assigned to either a control or intervention group. Pictures and stories will be collected during reminiscence sessions between the researchers and the grandparents before the intervention. During an intervention period of 2 months, grandchildren in the intervention group will receive pictures and stories of their grandparents on their social media account. Pre- and postintervention questionnaires will measure relationship quality, relationship investment, and conversational resources and will be used to assess the effectiveness of the intervention. Results: We conducted a pretest pilot from January to April 2018 among 6 pairs of participants (6 grandparents and 6 grandchildren). The validation of the protocol was focused on the process, instruments, and technological setup. We continued the study after the validation, and 59 pairs of participants (59 grandparents and 59 grandchildren) have been recruited. The data collection was completed in November 2019. Conclusions: The results of this study will contribute to strategies to stimulate social interactions in intergenerational pairs. A validation of the study process is also presented to provide further operational recommendations. The lessons learned during the validation of the protocol are discussed with recommendations and implications for the recruitment, reminiscence sessions, technological setup, and administration of instruments. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/16315

Background. This review studies technology-supported interventions to help older adults, living in situations of reduced mobility, overcome loneliness, and social isolation. The focus is on long-distance interactions, investigating the (i) challenges addressed and strategies applied; (ii) technology used in interventions; and (iii) social interactions enabled. Methods. We conducted a search on Elsevier’s Scopus database for related work published until January 2020, focusing on (i) intervention studies supported mainly by technology-mediated communication, (ii) aiming at supported virtual social interactions between people, and (iii) evaluating the impact of loneliness or social isolation. Results. Of the 1178 papers screened, 25 met the inclusion criteria. Computer and Internet training was the dominant strategy, allowing access to communication technologies, while in recent years, we see more studies aiming to provide simple, easy-to-use technology. The technology used was mostly off-the-shelf, with fewer solutions tailored to older adults. Social interactions targeted mainly friends and family, and most interventions focused on more than one group of people. Discussion. All interventions reported positive results, suggesting feasibility. However, more research is needed on the topic (especially randomized controlled trials), as evidenced by the low number of interventions found. We recommend more rigorous methods, addressing human factors and reporting technology usage in future research.

Previous work has focused on designing and evaluating information communication technology (ICT) tools for improving the coordination, organization of care practices, and to a less extent, the mediation of care communication among various involved actors. Our work contributes to addressing this gap with a specific emphasis on aged care, exploring communication practices, related challenges and design principles that should guide the design of technology-mediated information sharing. We do this by conducting three sets of user studies iterating on design mockups of increasing fidelity, through semi-structured interviews and workshops with nursing home (NH) staff and residents’ family members in four Italian nursing homes. The qualitative and quantitative results point to the potential of computer-mediated information sharing in this context, and to the importance (and challenges) of tailoring information and presentation to people’s needs and traits, and assisting care professionals in managing the information flow and proper communication.