Design Aspects for Elderly Using a Health Smart Home

Abstract

The part of the population above 70 years is increasing rapidly. This will put an immense pressure on the eldercare, with scarce resources to accommodate for such a demographic situation. Therefore the importance of enabling the elderly to live in their own home as long as possible is crucial. The health smart home area is able to facilitate such living. While developers still believe in the potential of such technology, the level of adoption among the elderly is low. This study focuses on discussing some design implications that is of importance for systems addressing this social group. In order to achieve this, five qualitative interviews was conducted with elderly between the ages of 70 and 85. The elderly was asked questions within three main aspects of a health smart home: social robots, health and security. A number of quality attributes were identified in the study and all of them fall under the two major categories, acceptability (Usability, Affordability) and trustworthiness (Safety, Security, Reliability, Privacy). The insight from the study may serve as a basis for further discussions of design implications for the health smart home area.