Family Care Book

Information

Author: Cruijsberg, M.
Contributor: Vastenburg, M.H., Stappers, P.J.
Faculty: Industrial Design Engineering
Department: ID/DCC
Programme: Design for Interaction
Type: Master thesis
Date: 7-4-2010
Keywords: Design | Awareness systems| Family care | Senior | Independent | Support

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Abstract

This report presents an awareness display for supporting family carers of independently living seniors. The focus was on providing awareness and promoting peace of mind. It was developed as part of a graduation project. In a literature research, family care, context awareness systems and state of the art were studied. User research was conducted to further explore the user context and the awareness needs of the family carers.

The results of the literature research and user research were used to design a concept of the Family Care Book. In a field study, the final design was tested with end-users, in order to determine if the Family Care Book is able to support the family carer’s awareness and provide peace of mind. The increase of senior citizens will put pressure on the professional care system since the number of people providing the care is expected to stay the same. Senior citizens often prefer to live independently in a familiar setting. The trend of seniors living independently is recognized and supported by the government. Senior citizens living on their own can help lower the pressure on the care system.

Ageing often makes it harder for senior citizens to complete normal daily activities. Therefore it is very important for an independently living senior citizen in the need of a support to have a good supporting net. The family carers, the friends and family, often play an important role especially when a support starts to be needed.
Family carers need to be aware of the senior citizens situation in order to provide care in the right way and pick up on changes in the situation. It often is difficult for family carers to be aware which causes them to worry about the senior. Often a balance needs to be found between the senior citizen’s desire to live independently in a familiar setting versus the need for a safe living situation.
Awareness systems are considered a promising means to support independently living seniors and their caregivers. Currently there are remote monitoring products to capture everyday routines. However acceptance issues arise since the current options do not fit the need and pose a tension between privacy and independence.
The results of the literature research confirmed context awareness systems as a promising means to support independently living seniors and their caregivers. The challenge is thus to design a device that incorporates contextawareness technology and fits the need of the family carer and is accepted by both the family carer and the senior. Literature suggested that when seniors notice the benefits of a technology, they are more likely to accept this technology.

In an operational research conducted among 8 target users, the needs and wishes of this group were examined. This research provided insight into the lives and worries of the family
carers. The research consisted of a contextmapping study and semi-structured interviews. The information need as described by literature and the user research are consistent. The user research confirmed that worries can cover all levels of human needs identified by Maslow. However the awareness displays developed in previous researches never provided awareness of all 5 levels of human needs. Often only the bottom two needs are monitored. The contextmapping study shows awareness is also wanted on all levels of human needs. The exact information can cover all human needs.

Based on the literature research, research with the family carers, the awareness needed of the seniors situation to promote peace of mind and how to present the information was determined. The awareness needs included a combination of monitoring sensor data and communication. This combination provides a broader look on the situation and includes the senior in the system.
Based on the awareness needs and findings from the user research and related work a final design was developed. The final design is named the Family Care Book. A journal metaphor is used to convey the information to the user. The interaction is based on the personal interest social intimates have for each other and the worries connected to an aging senior.
The Family care book does not only tell the family carer when things are going wrong, but also shows when things are going right. The Family Care Book gives an overview of the senior citizens day. Sensors are used to provide a view on the senior’s day and indicate when it is going considerably different from normal. Communication through messages is used to share experiences, messages and feelings.

In order to verify if the application reached its goal, a prototype was built and tested. The prototype was developed to enable the basic functionalities needed to test if the Family Care Book could help provide awareness and support peace of mind. A field test was conducted with two couples consisting of a family carer and the independently living senior they cared for. Unfortunately the validation of the test results is limited. A larger-scale user study with a better functioning prototype is needed in order to collect significant results, these preliminary findings do suggest that the approach taken in terms of a portable awareness display which allows sharing practical information with social communication seems promising.