The aging society has arrived, and more and more older adults are living in a nursing home. However, institutional care settings are often described as places where residents suffer from social isolation. Under this context, we describe the process of translating into fieldwork into interactive systems facilitating elderly residents’ social interaction and wellbeing. Comprehensive semi-structured interviews with older residents and caregivers were first conducted in a Dutch nursing home, aiming at understanding the status of their social interaction. The context of a typical elderly resident’s social interaction was then generated, and based on which three interactive systems focusing on different aspects of their social interaction were designed and deployed. The paper finally concludes with design considerations for promoting social interaction and wellbeing of older adults living in the nursing home.

Social interactions significantly impact the quality of life for people with special needs (e.g., older adults with dementia and children with autism). They may suffer loneliness and social isolation more often than people without disabilities. There is a growing demand for technologies to satisfy the social needs of such user groups. However, evaluating these systems can be challenging due to the extra difficulty of gathering data from people with special needs (e.g., communication barriers involving older adults with dementia and children with autism). Thus, in this systematic review, we focus on studying data gathering methods for evaluating socially assistive systems (SAS). Six academic databases (i.e., Scopus, Web of Science, ACM, Science Direct, PubMed, and IEEE Xplore) were searched, covering articles published from January 2000 to July 2021. A total of 65 articles met the inclusion criteria for this systematic review. The results showed that existing SASs most often targeted people with visual impairments, older adults, and children with autism. For instance, a common type of SASs aimed to help blind people perceive social signals (e.g., facial expressions). SASs were most commonly assessed with interviews, questionnaires, and observation data. Around half of the interview studies only involved target users, while the other half also included secondary users or stakeholders. Questionnaires were mostly used with older adults and people with visual impairments to measure their social interaction, emotional state, and system usability. A great majority of observational studies were carried out with users in special age groups, especially older adults and children with autism. We thereby contribute an overview of how different data gathering methods were used with various target users of SASs. Relevant insights are extracted to inform future development and research.

PurposeThe development of assistive technologies that support people in social interactions has attracted increased attention in HCI. This paper presents a systematic review of studies of Socially Assistive Systems targeted at older adults and people with disabilities. The purpose is threefold: (1) Characterizing related assistive systems with a special focus on the system design, primarily including HCI technologies used and user-involvement approach taken; (2) Examining their ways of system evaluation; (3) Reflecting on insights for future design research.MethodsA systematic literature search was conducted using the keywords “social interactions” and “assistive technologies” within the following databases: Scopus, Web of Science, ACM, Science Direct, PubMed, and IEEE Xplore.ResultsSixty-five papers met the inclusion criteria and were further analyzed. Our results showed that there were 11 types of HCI technologies that supported social interactions for target users. The most common was cognitive and meaning understanding technologies, often applied with wearable devices for compensating users’ sensory loss; 33.85% of studies involved end-users and stakeholders in the design phase; Four types of evaluation methods were identified. The majority of studies adopted laboratory experiments to measure user-system interaction and system validation. Proxy users were used in system evaluation, especially in initial experiments; 42.46% of evaluations were conducted in field settings, primarily including the participants’ own homes and institutions.ConclusionWe contribute an overview of Socially Assistive Systems that support social interactions for older adults and people with disabilities, as well as illustrate emerging technologies and research opportunities for future work.

In the past decades, we have witnessed a proliferation of interactive public displays for advertisement, entertainment and exhibition. We believe they also have great potential in the public spaces of caring environments if supported by related knowledge of design and research. This study explores how to design and evaluate interactive public displays in caring environments with a case study. In this paper, we describe the design process of OutLook, which is part of an initial participatory system specially designed for nursing homes to explore the possibilities of connecting people. It aims to enhance nursing home residents’ social wellbeing through a “look-outside” and a “postcard-sending” metaphor. A field trial was performed to assess the effects of OutLook on nursing home residents’ social behavior and feelings of connectedness. Key design factors for the effects and lessons learned were proposed as regard to design concept, design ideation, form of design, content, interfaces, interactions and field trial.