title: Older users, multimodal reminders and assisted living technology.
abstract: The primary users of assisted living technology are older people who are likely to have one or more sensory impairments. Multimodal technology allows users to interact via non-impaired senses and provides alternative ways to interact if primary interaction methods fail. An empirical user study was carried out with older participants which evaluated the performance, disruptiveness and subjective workload of visual, audio, tactile and olfactory notifications then compared the results with earlier findings in younger participants. It was found that disruption and subjective workload were not affected by modality, although some modalities were more effective at delivering information accurately. It is concluded that although further studies need to be carried out in a real-world settings, the findings support the argument for multiple modalities in assisted living technology.
authors.affiliation: School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, UK. dave@davewarnock.com
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Warnock
authors.forename: Marilyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McGee-Lennon
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brewster
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006299:Health Services for the Aged; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055696:Olfactory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D010812:Physical Stimulation; D017010:Reminder Systems / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012656:Self-Help Devices; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data