Ambient Assisted Living

The majority of older people want to age in their own living environment and not in a nursing home. But more often than not, older people living at home alone are not able to cope with everyday life anymore without external help. This is where digitization promises a big potential, to give some sort of autonomity back to the older generation. To make sure that elderly users accept technological solutions, fundamental UX research is needed to ensure a positive user experience.

A lot of today‘s systems that are developed to assist the elderly, so called „Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)“ systems, are based on interesting and innovative ideas. Sensors that are integrated into the living environment and systems for automatic fall detection, light control or smart systems that switch off the stove automatically are only a few examples (see fig. 1).

During planning and development though, very few teams involve real users that will use these systems in the future or they just evaluate the finished systems with usability tests and hope that they have met real user needs. Strategic research during the innovation phase is missing more often than not. A better way is to use a triangulation of research methods to inform the innovation phase with real data of real users.

For my master‘s thesis around Ambient Assisted Living systems I could spot several issues through ethnographic resarch that are important to older people and serve as the data basis for the following part of this article.

In-depth interviews

Detailed in-depth interviews come in very handy to understand the goals, opinions, anxieties or the general feeling of elderly people. Important areas of people’s lifes can be captured and used to inform the development of new Ambient Assisted Living systems.

Ethnographic studies

With ethnographic studies you can observe and interview people in their everyday life. The research team can capture the behaviour and needs of study participants in their real context of use and ask specific questions to avoid misunderstandings.

Diary studies

On a personal and financial level it is not really possible to accompany study participants day and night. Especially in the very private environment of the personal appartment. Therefore diary studies are very helpful for studies that span over multiple days or weeks. The study participants can record their needs, experiences and problems on their own either through writing, voice memos or taking pictures or videos. This way the research team can gain deep insights into the participant’s daily routine that is related to the topic of the study. Subsequent to capturing the data the resarch team can discuss the records with the participant to avoid misunderstandings and to get more detailed answers if needed.

The value of early fundamental UX research

Fundamental research in the planning phase for new Ambient Assisted Living systems on the basis of real behaviour, problems and needs of future users makes sure that the ongoing development is heading in the right direction. Through this approach bad investments can be avoided because it is very hard and complicated to change already ongoing development processes. Only through research of the target users and their environments companies can make sure which solutions are accepted and which will ultimately fail in the market. Mere assumptions of the product team that are not backed by real data are not enough.

For more information about the usage and research of Ambient Assisted Living systems you can check out the SPHERE project, an AAL project around sensor technology of the University of Bristol.