AHFE Open AccessHuman Factors in Aging and Special Needs
Editors: Jay Kalra
Topics: Aging and Special Needs
Publication Date: 2023
ISBN: 978-1-958651-64-3
DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003990
Articles
One-handed Disabled Product Design Based on CJM-KANO-AHP User Need Model
One-handed disabled encounter many inconveniences in life. In order to help designers focus on the high-priority needs of the one-handed disabled and avoid the subjectivity of needs selection in product design, a product design method based on CJM (Customer Journey Map)-KANO (KANO Model)-AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) user need model for one-handed disabled is proposed. Firstly, the user needs of the one-handed disabled are collected comprehensively by CJM which helps to collect multi-scene needs. Secondly, the collected needs are classified according to the KANO model, needs are classified into must-be needs(M), one-dimensional needs(O), attractive needs(A), indifferent needs(I), reverse needs(R), and questionable needs(Q). And only the first three types of needs are retained. Thirdly, the user need hierarchy analysis model is constructed based on the AHP method， matrix judgment, weight calculation, and consistency check are conducted for the retaining needs ranking. Finally, the one-handed washboard was designed for addressing the first-ranking need of the one-handed disabled. The user need model based on CJM-KANO-AHP is applied in the product design process of one-handed disabled, which effectively solves the problem of multi-scene need collection and need prioritization. Compared with the existing methods that only rank the relatively limited number of needs in a single scene, our method ranks needs within the scope of multi-scene for the one-handed disabled which has more practical significance. It also provides ideas for similar product design processes.
Qi Liu, Jin-Juan Duan, Pin Zhang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
The Design of the Upper and Lower Limb Somatosensory Rehabilitation System Based on Users’ Requirements
In the context of China's aging population and the increasing number of paralyzed patients due to stroke and other diseases, the demand for rehabilitation training services for the elderly is gradually increasing. However, the intensity and repetitiveness of exercise training for upper and lower extremity rehabilitation make patients bored with rehabilitation training, leading to slower recovery. From the perspective of promoting the user's active participation in rehabilitation training, this study is based on the affinity diagram method (KJ), KANO model, and analytic hierarchy process (AHP), combined with a user journey map, to sort out and analyze the user needs of the upper and lower limb somatosensory rehabilitation system and identify critical design requirements to optimize the user's medical rehabilitation experience.The user journey map is a full-stage process analysis tool that obtains the behavioral paths of users at different stages of performing upper and lower extremity rehabilitation through observation and interviews, based on which pain points and opportunity points are uncovered and can be used as initial user requirements. The Kano model is a qualitative demand analysis method that helps to classify the demand attributes of users of upper and lower limb somatosensory rehabilitation systems and filter out the most core user needs. AHP theory is a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis and research methods, using the method of solving the eigenvectors of the judgment matrix, which can quantify and calculate the importance weight of user needs, and design according to the quantified results can help improve user satisfaction.The combination of the Kano model and AHP theory can quantify the user requirements obtained from the research and obtain the core design requirements. Therefore, the research path is divided into five steps: first, the initial identification of user requirements based on the user journey map; second, the organization of user requirements based on the KJ method; third, the screening of user requirements based on Kano model; fourth, the quantification of user requirements based on AHP theory; fifth, the design output based on data conclusion, this innovative research method can help designers accurately identify key requirements.According to the conclusion of the research data, the physiological rehabilitation needs and the professional guidance needs of users in the process of rehabilitation training have the greatest weight, and the design of the upper and lower limb somatosensory rehabilitation system revolves around these two types of core needs, including two main modules: (1) Somatosensory rehabilitation game module: Based on the mirror neuron rehabilitation therapy, the rehabilitation training movements are designed into a rehabilitation movement game based on somatosensory technology, which increases the fun of rehabilitation training. (2) Virtual Assistive Robot Module: It acts as a virtual therapist during the rehabilitation training, guiding patients to perform correct rehabilitation exercises and providing real-time and continuous feedback.By constructing the KJ-Kano-AHP design research model and combining it with the user journey map to acquire, analyze and quantify user requirements, it provides direction and theoretical support for the design of upper and lower limb somatosensory rehabilitation systems, and also provides ideas for solving similar problems.
Hu Zhe, Yi Li
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Designing a system using telepresence technology to enhance the feeling of "being there" for elderly individuals at healthcare centers
The study focuses on enhancing the "being there" presence by using 360 real-time video technology to create a remote interactive device system for the elderly in health care centers. By enhancing the “being there” presence of elderly, we can improve the physical and mental health of the elderly.In the experiment, the guide put on a wearable device to make a tour of a specific place, and the elderly watched the tour from a remote location on a monitor. After the test, we conducted a semi-structured interview with the participant to understand their feelings about the operation of the device, the content of the system, and their sense of "being there" presence. We also conducted expert interviews with the experimental results to establish the device's design direction, usability, and usage patterns.From the study, we have concluded that the design and usability of the navigation device and the viewer device, as well as the clarity of the viewing screen, are the main factors that affect remote presence. Devices that meet the usability of both parties can increase the sense of "being there" presence. Additionally, the interaction process between the elderly and the remote guide, as well as the content design and the process of interaction between the two people, can help enhance the remote presence of the elderly.
Yu-Lien Shen, Chien-Hsu Chen, I-Hsin Chen
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Design of a home-based food assistance service for the elderly
The urgent needs of food assistance for senior citizens increase rapidly. Elderly people are physically weak, especially those who are living alone, longliving, disabled and semi-disabled, and it is difficult for them to prepare nutritious meals on their own. Besides, since most of them suffer from chronic diseases and have special dietary requirements, the food provided to the general public is not suitable for them. It is becoming increasingly important to provide healthy eating assistance services for the elderly people at home. In this paper, users’ needs were inspected from the perspective of service design and an elderly-friendly meal service system was built for them. Firstly, we analyzed the existing elderly meal service model through desktop research. Secondly, we explored the problems of elderly users in the process of dining through semi-structured interviews in households and gain insight into their real needs. Then, we constructed an elderly-friendly meal service system. It solves various problems related to diets brought by aging (such as chronic disease management, lack of nutritional knowledge, etc.) by interactive designs, so that the elderly can receive meal assistance services based on their own health status, dietary preferences and other personalized needs.
Xiaodong Gong, Chen Wei, Yushun Liu, Qian Gong
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Life Stories – Developing an Interactive Solution for Reminiscence and Communication
Life stories are gathered information about a person, for example history, preferences, or habits. The method is often used in healthcare and care with the aim to support personalized care. This paper describes a project that explores how life stories can be gathered and made available by using interactive digital technology in new ways that supports a multi-sensory experience. Two workshops were conducted with participants from elder care, researchers, and designers. The aim with the first workshop was to frame the concept and to gain a deeper understanding of important aspects to consider. The aim with the second workshop was to gain a better understanding of the different user groups. The insights from the workshops are presented with respect to content, users, usage and interaction with different user groups. Important aspects that were brought up was ownership of the solution. This aspect is important since it is likely to affect what kind of information the users are willing to share. The kind of information a person is willing to share are also dependent on if it is friends, family or care giving personnel that will have access to the information. Further, it will be necessary to decide about how the solution will be used and if its focus should be on presenting information about a person’s history or if the focus should be on creating value in the moment.
Marie Sjölinder, Elin Hollström, Hanna Rönntoft
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Granting a better verdict of the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) with new technologies.
There are millions of people in the world who have been diagnosed with dementia and this condition not only directly affects the patient, but also their family members and caregivers; That is why it is sought to have a verdict in which it can be reliably seen if a person suffers from dementia. The way to know if the patient have dementia, is doing a test, one of the most famous tests is the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) this is test that is formed by five different sections: Orientation Registration, Attention and calculation, Language, Deferred memory; where it will seek to implement new parameters that will be recollected during al the test with a non-invasive sensor named shimmer, such as emotional response through facial expression analysis, galvanic skin response, heart rate and image similarity, using iMotions and OpenCV; the collected data is useful to the doctors to have an insight about the patient and they can give a better diagnose, and they can see the most difficult part to the participant.
Gemma Alejandra Martínez Santos, Ariel Lopez Aguilar, Sergio Navarro Tuch, Lili Marlene Camacho Bustamante, Rogelio Bustamante-Bello
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
An exploratory user study on the design of smart walking aids for community-dwelling older adults
Population aging has increasingly become an issue of concern globally. Aging inevitably reduces older adults’ physical capacity (e.g., mobility) and further affects their ability to live independently or perform daily activities. Walking aids (e.g., canes) are generally used as assistive devices to provide physical support and reduce fall risk in daily activities. Given the rapid development of artificial intelligence algorithms and hardware computing capability, smart walking aids with functions like fall alert, health monitoring, and positioning have become promising in elderly care. However, it remains unclear whether community-dwelling older adults are ready for smart walking aids. The present study aims to explore community-dwelling older adults’ attitudes and perceptions of smart walking aids, especially on the functions of fall alert, health monitoring, pill reminder, positioning, and topography detection. The results are expected to guide future designs of smart walking aids to increase users’ well-being in daily life. A convenience sampling method was applied to collect data via an online questionnaire for demographic information, attitudes, and design expectations toward smart walking aids. Chi-square tests and binary logistic regression models were used to analyze the associations among demographics, attitudes, and design expectations. The data were collected from 264 valid respondents (148 males and 116 females; 60.5±7.4 years). The results showed safety assurance, sturdy products, and additional intelligent functions were the most expected design elements in smart walking aids. Community-dwelling older adults preferred three intelligent functions: fall alert, health monitoring, and positioning. However, complex operations would resist users from adopting smart walking aids, showing the importance of usability in future designs. No significant group differences were found in purchase preference and attitudes toward smart walking aids among gender (p > 0.06), education (p > 0.35), and living arrangement (p > 0.06). The results of binary logistic regressions showed that individuals with a user history of smart walking aids are about ten times more likely to buy smart walking aids than those with no user history (p = 0.025, OR = 10.376). Older adults aged 71-80 preferred smart walking aids over other age groups (p = 0.048). Individuals aged 61-70 years are more interested in the intelligent functions of fall alert (p = 0.002) and health monitoring (p = 0.021). Community-dwelling older adults showed positive attitudes to smart walking aids with functions such as fall alerts, health monitoring, and positioning to support their independence in their daily lives. User-centered designs are crucially needed to speed up the successful implementation of smart walking aids in the community.
Qian Mao, Zihan Li, Chengxi Huang, Hailiang Wang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Simplified CAD model of a person for the simulation of their movements
Currently, several computer programs evaluate the ergonomics of products or measure the physical effort a person must make in a particular task, either at her job, at home, or as a mechanical or electronic machine user. However, these computer programs are expensive and sometimes need to be installed with another program to run within them and share resources such as solid modeling, mass calculation, drawing generation, and finite element analysis.This article aims to define a simplified person model that can be used in different computer programs pointed at the academic community and available with student licenses. These models will simulate the mechanisms of the devices older adults and people with special needs use for their training or recovery, making it possible to calculate the kinematics involved in using these appliances.This work also shows the type of kinematic constraints that must be defined so that the simplified model of a person can move. Each set of kinematic constraints will simulate a specific movement; the more constraints used, the better the representation of the natural movement of a person. Subsequently, with the simplified person model, devices aimed at older adults and people with special needs can be designed and evaluated and used in various computer programs with licenses for students.The methodology consists of initially defining a first simplified model of a person, as essential as possible, to define the kinematic restrictions to simulate their movements. Subsequently, a case study is used to evaluate the movements transmitted from an elliptical machine toward the person. Finally, a kinematic inversion is carried out to analyze the movements transmitted from the person to the elliptical machine.At the beginning of this work, a review of the leading computer programs that evaluate a person's ergonomics is made. Then the procedure used to define the simplified person model with its kinematic constraints is shown. Subsequently, through the case study, movements transmitted from the person to the case study and from the case study to the person are evaluated. At the end, the results are presented, as well as future work and conclusions.
Hector Rafael Morano Okuno, Guillermo Sandoval, Rafael Caltenco Castillo, Donovan Esqueda Merino, Jose De Jesus Solis Cordova, Andres Andres Garcia Garcia
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Effects of art courses on older adults
With the development of creative aging, art courses are seen as an important way to improve the physical and mental health of older adults. This study designed and developed two art courses (visual art, the association of colors and music) to understand their effects on older adults, including mood and participation experiences. A pretest-posttest by questionnaire (the Mood Assessment Scale) and participants’ feedback were adopted. The two art courses were conducted in two care stations in Taiwan. Thirty-two adults aged 50-90 participated in the two courses. The research team conducted paired sample t tests on the results of the questionnaire. The results showed no significant difference in the participants’ moods in the visual art course (p = 0.169). However, there was significant improvement in the associating colors and music course (p = 0.001), with a score of 4.28 (0.63) increasing to 4.75 (0.51). Concerning the feedback provided by the participants, this study found that course development with stakeholders’ communication helped develop a user-friendly course and that independent creation (relatively low difficulty) stimulated a sense of accomplishment for the older adults. On the other hand, the multi-sensory experience of the course and the group creation could enrich the course experience of older adults and positively impact their mood. It is hoped that the results can provide empirical and practical experience for designing future art courses for older adults.
Liang-Ming Jia, Fang-Wu Tung
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Digital Support Requirements for the Care Community QuartierPflege
The integration of informal caregiving into everyday life can lead to burdens that negatively affect health and psychological well-being of family caregivers. Care communities consisting of a dynamic network of informal and professional actors can offer a solution to reduce family caregiver burden. Close cooperation in such care communities gives rise to the immediate need for efficient coordination tools including digital support. Existing Apps for family caregivers do not always provide sufficient support to improve health and quality of life. Currently, there is no App holistically supporting daily work in care communities consisting of informal and professional actors. To fill this gap, specific App requirements for coordinating daily work in such care communities were identified in a user-centric approach. Therefore, structured personal interviews were conducted with N = 16 potential actors of care communities. Audio-recorded interviews were literally transcribed and analyzed in MaxQDA by structured qualitative content analysis. App requirements were divided into four major categories: operational planning (e.g., submission of care needs, handover books, calendar, synchronization of family caregivers’ and care recipients’ profiles), information (e.g., an information section per care recipient), communication (e.g., internal chat, speech-to-text-function) and human resources (e.g., administration of staff, working time and payment). In addition, privacy aspects (e.g., providing most important physical limitations of care recipients, but no medical diagnosis), usability and user experience (e.g., intuitive usage, logical structure, visually appealing design) as well as backend App requirements (e.g., implementation of different horizontal and vertical App permissions) were addressed. The target group of future App users could be wide with different roles in coordinating the daily work in care communities, which results in complex software requirements. Usability and user experience of a future App need to be evaluated with the target group. Furthermore, it should be evaluated whether digital support of care communities of informal and professional caregivers offers a holistic approach and a sustainable improvement of the quality of life and health of family caregivers.
Nicole Siebert, Hannes Wenner, Tim Kuball, Florian Kiel, Matthias Beggiato, Stefan Oer, Georg Jahn
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Designing Early Detection Screening System for Dementia in Indonesia
The lack of awareness and misunderstanding between dementia and forgetfulness as normal parts of aging often leads to late diagnoses of dementia. This situation can be compounded by the fact that there is currently no cure for dementia and it is difficult to prevent or slow its progression. To address this, an early warning system for detecting dementia symptoms is essential. This study aims to design a new approach to dementia screening by using a chatbot with customized questions for each user. If any potential symptoms are detected, the chatbot will provide recommendations for medical evaluation. This research focuses on individuals over 60 years of age who reside in urban areas in Indonesia and will be conducted through the WhatsApp platform, a widely used communication tool in the country. The chatbot will gather information on personal habits based on elements of dementia measurement through questions asked. Initial data was obtained through qualitative interviews, used to customize questions specific to each participant's preferences. By using the customization questions, the Chatbot Prevention Dementia will offer a personalized approach to detecting cognitive status and help family members understand the situation of the elderly individual.
Agatha Maisie Tjandra, Agatha Maisie Tjandra, Ziyi Li, Chien-Hsu Chen
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Perceiving Through Colors: Visual Supports for Children with Autism
Visual supports are a communication tool for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to expand their interaction with their surroundings. Interventions to assist children with autism include visual resources as cognitive methods to help them understand concepts, communicate needs, and better navigate their world. One of the key elements in effective visual interaction with an essential effect on autistic children’s behavior is color. Prior studies demonstrated that various colors have different impacts on children with autism. Responses to color are both physiological and psychological. Children with ASD may show unusual sensory processing and perception, as observed by anecdotal evidence from persons with autism and their parents, caregivers, and teachers, suggesting that autistic children may perceive colors differently compared to neurotypical children. Colors’ effect on ASD children may extend well beyond what we imagine. We should not neglect the importance of the particular color effect to avoid sensory overload and attain an optimal setting for children with ASD. Our research tries to further investigate and highlight the relationship between autism and colors by decoding the need of autistic children as follows: (i) whether the color perception is atypical in these children, (ii) highlighting autism-friendly colors, (iii) underlining what colors can improve ASD children’s interaction skills and attention span in different settings. This need-finding study extracted from the existing research and the feedback of users and clinical professionals to identify categories of needs and in-depth observations to understand those categories. Based on our literature review, anecdotal, and observational methods, the results emphasize the need for (i) an in-depth investigation of the physiological and psychological color’s effect; (ii) efficient and reliable tracking methods for unbiased, passive data collection considering challenges associated with the extensive and often unknown interaction characteristics of each autism spectrum; (iii) thorough data analysis and hidden pattern discovery of the collected high-dimensional data; and (iv) adaptive and customizable technology-based guidelines for parents, caregivers, teachers of autistic children, and persons with autism themselves.
Neda Barbazi, Cecilia Xi Wang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
”Changing Death”: Initial Insights for Software Practitioners in Thanatopractice
Digital transformation is now reaching into topics like End-of-life Care, Funeral Culture, and Coping with Grief. Those developments are inevitably accompanied by the growing challenge to design IT systems that are appropriate and helpful for the stakeholders involved. Our aim in this paper is to further introduce the rather new combined research field of Socioinformatics and Thanatology (the scientific study of death and dying) and to present it with the first results on which requirements to consider for the design of digital tools within ‘Thanatopractice’. By using Participatory Design and the Sustainability Awareness Framework (SusAF) in the context of three workshops on socio-technical systems (Online Pastoral Care, Virtual Graveyards, and AI Memory Avatars), we want to sensitize software practitioners to the multidimensional impacts of their products and services in a field, which the participants in the workshops often described as “highly sensitive”.
Dominic Lammert, Stefanie Betz, Nele Wulf, Jari Porras
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Bridging the generation gap: Improving empathic accuracy by Personas
With the aging population increasing, understanding this emerging user group is a current important topic. Past research has indicated that personas are beneficial for young designers to make inferences about the elder group, and can evoke creativity. Therefore, this research has adjusted the existing personas for better results in both aspects. This research has added the identity category to the existing personas, expecting that it would guide young designers to be aware of the identities of the video characters other than the elders, thus considering more potential needs and be able to understand the characters by their words instead of the group they belong to 17 students with design background were recruited in this research. They watch the interviews of the elders and write different versions of personas, followed by scoring through empathic accuracy process and creativity evaluation process. The results of the research indicated that, adding the identity category to the personas did enable to find more potential needs, however, it did not have any effect on empathic accuracy. Compared to the current design process that emphasizes on improving the empathy of designers in order to recognize a wider range of needs, this research suggests that improving the ability to identify needs does not necessarily require “reading minds” of the users, that is, having to fully understand the thoughts and feelings of users does not necessarily lead to creativity; by letting designers be aware of the identity categories of the group, the potential of recognizing needs can be expanded, thus bringing more possibilities to design.
Chiu Kuan Ming, Dinghau Huang
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Design of Ergonomics-based Bath Chair for the Elderly
Today, with the global population aging, more and more older people live alone. Daily bathing becomes extremely difficult, or even dangerous, for these older people who live alone with little legs. In this study, a questionnaire survey (195 older people were invited to participate in the questionnaire), user profile, and in-depth interview (3 older people with typical characteristics were profiled and interviewed) were used, and a user journey map of older people's bathing was drawn to understand their bathing process and needs more clearly. Then, we analyzed the problems of existing elderly bathing products by combining the physiological and psychological characteristics of the elderly. The product combines ergonomic principles and integrated design theory. Subsequent evaluation experiments were conducted through prototypes, and we also increased the details of the product according to the activities of the elderly when bathing in order to achieve thorough safety protection for the elderly group. This study can effectively reflect the potential perceived needs of the elderly for furniture products and the updated, relevant ergonomic data and provide adequate references for the design practice of furniture for the elderly.
Xin Chen, Hongling Ji, Le Xu
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Android-based Indoor Physical Activities Detection and Monitoring System using Pose Estimation
In the last decade, innovation in the fitness and health industry has exponentially expanded, resulting in new devices like fitness trackers, calorie counters, diet planners, and running trackers. However, a large proportion of the population is elder people who need technical assistance to live their life healthy and independently. In order to progress the advancement in this research area, we concentrated on developing a mobile application that can recognize and assist human actions during exercise and store their records. In this study, a computer vision-based application is developed that can recognize and monitor indoor physical exercises of people especially elders through a smartphone camera. The application uses the pose estimation method to recognize the exercises and further counts the number of exercises and repetitions. This application can recognize 12 different physical exercises, which are further divided into three main categories such as upper body (dumbbell press, overhead arms, back twist, chest, shoulder, front arm), lower body (chair stand, leg raise forward/backward, side leg raise, squats, balance walk), and whole-body (pushups) exercises. An android application is developed which combines OpenPose, deep learning framework, and OpenCV for pose estimation, learning, and visualization while the android studio is used for application development. We use the Media pipe library for the detection and tracking of 33 different points in the human body, including face points. For pose estimation and activity recognition, we calculate different angles between body-detected joints, which are used to recognize the exercise. Moreover, we also measure how many repetitions the user performs in a specific exercise. Finally, the application was tested on 15 different users, which gave positive feedback, and the results were quite accurate for detecting and counting the exercises. Furthermore, the application is very useful for elderly people who mostly stay in their homes or people who can’t join the Gym outside due to their busy schedules.
Imran Ullah Khan, Sana Tahir, Jong Weon Lee
Open Access
Article
Conference Proceedings
Usability of Documentation Software Used by Direct Support Providers: A Proof-of-Concept Study
Direct support professionals (DSPs) face high levels of stress and burnout while providing care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DDs). This paper examines the usability challenges associated with documentation software used by DSPs. A proof-of-concept study surveyed six DSPs to assess the subjective usability of the software using the Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use (USE) Questionnaire. Results showed that DSPs rated the software neutrally or negatively across dimensions of Usefulness (mean = 4.12; SD = 2.66), Ease of use (mean = 3.65; SD = 2.17), Learnability (mean = 3.46; SD = 2.52), and Satisfaction (mean = 2.75; SD = 1.50). Addressing usability issues is crucial to improve DSPs' well-being and the quality of care provided to individuals with I/DD. User-centered design principles and usability testing are necessary to improve health information technology (HIT) systems, reduce cognitive load, streamline workflows, and increase user satisfaction. By recognizing the significance of HIT usability and its impact on burnout, organizations can prioritize the design and implementation of systems that support DSPs. Future research include larger sample size and qualitative data collection to gather user feedback to create intuitive and effective documentation software to better support DSPs.
Martina A. Clarke, Lisa L Neitzke, Kathryn M Cooper
Open Access
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Conference Proceedings