Enhancing Control and Empowerment for Elders through Assistive Technology
Smith College: Phebe Sessions, Julie Abramson, David Burton, Mary Olson, Lynn Mazur, Alison Pietras, Jordan Crouser
University of Massachusetts – Amherst: Edward Riseman, Allen Hanson, Roderic Grupen, Shichao Ou, Adam Williams, Dan Xie, Jessica Krause, Joseph Gallo, Caitlin Bailey
Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories: Candace Sidner
Project Goal
Studying how assistive technology can be structured, designed, implemented and introduced to most benefit elders to enhance quality of life and ability to remain in control of their environments.
Social Science
1. Focus
The social work team will involve elders, family caregivers, and
professionals who serve elders, in a partnership to define the problems
and possible technological solutions for empowerment of elders.
2. Social Science Theory
 grounded in an ecosystemic perspective because elderly face
challenges of continual adaptation to changing physical and cognitive
capacities as, well as constant changes in social relationships and support.
 changes in any functional domain may require numerous adjustments,
shifting the “fit” between person and environment.
 to maintain their capacity, many elders need to be situated within
networks (family, formal care givers, informal supports, community) of
interdependent parts.
 an ecosystemic perspective promotes attention to the dynamics of
empowerment with focus on identification of interventions that enhance
capacity and generate cascading effects of improved functioning in
different domains of life.
3. Methods
 focus group methodology being used for this study.
 fits the empowerment focus of the study as participants often feel more
empowered in a group than in 1:1 methodologies.
 the groups are comprised of three different stake-holder
constituencies: elders, caretakers of elders and professionals who work
with elders.
 although a focus group interview guide was used, the group leaders used
a relationally based method of dialectic, focusing upon conversation
rather than strictly question-guided narrative responses. This allowed for
deeper reflection and synergistic communication among participants.
4. Focus Group Interview Guide
• Reaffirm and discuss the meaning of informed consent, indicate that all
participants have the right to discontinue participation at any time.
•Explain rationale for focus groups and the need for input from
stakeholders to influence potential application of assistive technology.
•Ask about success with technology as an icebreaker.
•Explain potential range of technology to be used in study and its possible
applications.
•Ask if anyone in the group has any questions about the technology and
what it can do
•Ask in what specific ways participants see this technology as potentially
enhancing the quality of elders’ lives
•Ask if they anticipate any problems or difficulties arising from these
technologies; ask for specific issues related to feasibility and utility of the
technology for elders
•Ask for suggestions re needed changes to the technology in order to
increase its utility or feasibility for elders.
5. Focus Group Participants
 purposive convenience samples were recruited with the assistance of
local social service agencies, comprised of a relatively well educated,
mostly middle class group of participants from Massachusetts.
 the group was all mobile - none were in wheel chairs although several
used canes and similar devices. Additionally and intentionally, none of the
group was cognitively impaired. Other group characteristics were not
collected to protect the identity of the sample in this small project.
6. Advisory Group
• the team engaged an advisory subset of elders from the community from
diverse socioeconomic and professional backgrounds to serve as a pilot
group
• proved to be invaluable in providing critical feedback to both the UMass
and Smith team.
Computer Science
1. Focus
7. Preliminary Analysis
• an analysis method has been developed using standard open and axial
coding, with the tools of diaries, memoing, and concept mapping.
Develop technology consistent with the findings of our social science partners and
to suggest potentially relevant technology for further study.
• the transcripts will be analyzed in stake holder pairs. Additional observational
data from three professionals (two from the Smith team and one from the
UMASS team) are also included in the analyses.
2. Early Key Findings
• as the project focuses upon empowerment of the elders, examples of
empowerment, and or lack thereof, are being purposively sought within the
analysis in order to address the query implicit in the framework of the study
8. Early Key Findings
Expectation of enhanced social networks and community
Participants expressed much enthusiasm for the capacity of current computer
technology and the potential of video enhanced technology in the future to enrich
their social networks.
• One elder began a group by describing her encounter with her future
husband through the internet: “Seven years ago, my son (introduced me to
computers); (I met my husband on line); I was in California and he was in
Massachusetts; we dated for two years on the internet (and then married). It
changed my life! “
Video Phone
• Provides live, face-to-face video and voice
communication
Researchers:
• Based on Skype internet telephony services
Shichao Ou, Dan Xie
• Accessible interface customized for elderly
needs
Contact Selection Screen
Feedback
•After seeing an example of videophone technology, one self-defined “very
social” participant who struggles with mobility offered “…if such a point and
time would come that it would be physically impossible for me [to get out and
visit friends], that would be a nice thing to have because I tend to rely a lot on
the telephone where I'm calling my friends in CA or GA or AZ or NY and to
have the face to face contact along with it would be rather nice.”
Less fear of surveillance and significant fear of threats to safety
Previous literature and other researchers with whom we visited in the past year
concurred that elders would be fearful of cameras being used in their homes to
assist them. Fears of surveillance, unwanted exposure and loss of privacy concerns,
were raised by several researchers. Yet, in our initial analyses, elders became less
concerned about cameras in the home when they understood that the data stored
on the computer would not be maintained, nor perpetually watched by an unknown
observer; instead the computer would analyze the data and alert a pre-selected (by
the elder) help source (e.g., Doctor, emergency services, caretaker) if there were a
safety threat, such as the detection of a fall. Elder participants had less fear of loss
of privacy and more fear of threats to safety than professional participants.
• One participant illustrated acceptance and need for such technologies,
combined with significant fear of injury and death without such technology, as
she stated: “I can see this in a hospital and a nursing home. Actually, there
was a woman … who God Bless Her (was living on her own) at age 97. Her
sister,…was just approaching her 100th birthday, was in a nursing home, had
fallen out of bed, had called for help, no one heard her, she was on the floor all
night long, caught pneumonia and died. Her daughter went to an attorney.
The response was, ‘Well she was 100 years old.’ But the fact that no one
came around to check on people (was frightening); …(with this kind of
technology), this woman who was basically a healthy human being might still
Technology
be alive at 105 or 106 because they have that longevity in their family.”
Live Video Phone Call Display
Object Finder
•Camera-based object locator
• Machine learning techniques employed for
object detection and recognition
Researchers:
• Found object’s location displayed in live
video window
Dan Xie
• Does not require attaching a device to each
object
Object Selection Screen
Displaying the Location of an Object
Fall Detector
• Video-based fall detection
• Motion automatically analyzed to detect a
fall
• Local alert displayed in home
Researchers:
• Remote alert and video display sent to
emergency contacts
Adam Williams
• Video phone used to establish contact with
fall victim
Local Alert Display
Remote Alert Display
Calendar
• Information management tuned to the
needs of the elderly
Researchers:
• Another participant clarified that the concern about the cameras as seen by
other researchers, may be related to how the video is used and who is
doing the monitoring, as he stated “But I think this (dangerous fall) could
happen to any one of us in our own home and my thought is: it wouldn't be
invasive as long as nobody can see it until it's triggered in some way, and I
think that would be the key to make the difference and then you would have
elected who would be seeing you, so it would be limited to the police, the fire,
yeah, -certainly not your relative out in Washington”
Jessica Krause,
• Includes appointment/medication alerts and
reminders
Adam Williams
• Clean, simplified interface
Much concern about equity of access, costs and, user friendliness.
Participants expressed concerns about the costs of technology, whether they and
others would have access to it, and user friendliness/technical support that might be
needed to support its use.
• One participant asked “Now do you have to have this funded by let's say
Verizon or AT&T or Comcast or one of those places in order for it to actually be
on the market or can it be manufactured and produced by any electronic
genius? “ Elder and professional participants engaged with computer scientists
to give suggestions about increasing user capacity through overcoming
problems from sensory challenges.
• Integration with video phone and fall
detector
Today’s Schedule
Appointment Information
Address Book
• Keeps all important contact information in
one place
• Can specify emergency contact list
Researchers:
•Accessible interface customized for elderly
needs
Joseph Gallo
• Integration with calendar, video phone, and
fall detector.
Data Entry Screen
Interdisciplinary Research
• close communication between the social scientists and computer scientists, each educating and sensitizing the other to each other’s professional language
and perspective. “Technospeak” and “Psychospeak” had to give way to communication in universal language.
• graduate and undergraduate students in each area receive invaluable training in the other discipline.
•learn from each other about the debates within these fields that relate to the project through shared presentations, visits by the social scientists to the
research laboratories, participation by computer scientists in the focus groups and regular meetings of the research group as a whole.
Entry Display
3. Future Work
• Additional applications
• Robotics for health monitoring, object
retrieval, etc.
• Face recognition for home security