Smart homes equipped with ambient intelligence technology constitute a promising direction to enable the growing number of elderly to continue to live in their own homes as long as possible. However, this calls for technological solutions that suit their specific needs and capabilities. The SWEET-HOME project aims at developing a new user friendly technology for home automation based on voice command. This paper reports a user evaluation assessing the acceptance and fear of this new technology. 8 healthy persons between 71 and 88 years old, 7 relatives (child, grandchild or friend) and 3 professional carers participated in a user evaluation. During about 45 minutes, the persons were questioned in co-discovery in the DOMUS smart home alternating between interview and wizard of Oz periods followed by a debriefing. The experience aimed at testing four important aspects of the project: voice command, communication with the outside world, domotics system interrupting a person's activity, and electronic agenda. Voice interface appeared to have a great potential to ease daily living for elderly and frail persons and would be better accepted than more intrusive solutions. By considering still healthy and independent elderly people in the user evaluation, an interesting finding that came up is their overall acceptance provided the system does not drive them to a lazy lifestyle by taking control of everything. This particular fear really needs to be This work is supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche

Purpose The number of older persons in industrialized countries is steadily increasing. Seniors living alone are more numerous, and we must find solutions that will allow them to continue to stay at home comfortably and safely. Smart housings can be one of these solutions. One of the biggest challenges in ambient assisted living (AAL) is to develop smart homes that anticipate and respond to the needs of the inhabitants. Given the diverse profiles of the older adult population, it will therefore be essential to facilitate interaction with the smart home through systems that respond naturally to voice commands rather than using tactile interfaces. Method The first step in our study was to evaluate how well ambient assistive speech technology is received by the target population. We report on a user evaluation assessing acceptance and fear of this new technology. The experiment aimed at testing three important aspects of speech interaction: voice command, communication with the outside world, home automation system interrupting a person's activity. Participants were 7 older persons (71-88 years old), 7 relatives and 3 professional carers; the experiments were conducted in a smart home with a voice command using a Wizard-of-Oz technique. The second step in our study was related to the adaptation of speech recognition technologies to the older adult population. Judging by the literature this has not been extensively studied. In fact, it is known that industrialized speech recognition system models are not adapted to seniors but to other categories of the population. In order to do this we recorded a specific speech corpus (voice-age) with 7 older adults (70 to 89 years old) reading sentences (a total of 4 hours of speech). A second corpus (ERES38) of free talking (18 hours of speech) was recorded by 23 speakers (68-98 years old). These corpora were analyzed in a semi-automatic manner to reveal the aged-voice characteristics. Results & Discussion Regarding the technical aspect, it appears that some phonemes are more affected by age than others. Thus, a specific adaptation of the acoustic models for ASR is required. Regarding the acceptance aspect, voice interfaces appear to have a great potential to ease daily living for older adults and frail persons and would be better accepted than other, more intrusive, solutions. By considering still healthy and independent older persons in the user evaluation, one interesting finding was overall acceptance provided the system is not conducive to a lazy lifestyle by taking control of everything. This particular concern must be addressed in the development of smart homes that support daily living by stressing the ability to control the daily routine rather than altering it. This study shows the great interest of voice interfaces to develop efficient solution to enable the growing number of older persons to continue to live in their own homes as long as possible.

RESUMEDans cet article, nous nous intéressons à l'évaluation sur le terrain de dispositifs mobiles et plus particulièrement à la validité des analyses issues de ces expérimentations. Pour cela, nous avons mis en oeuvre une approche originale consistant à effectuer une méta-évaluation de deux évaluations d'une même expérimentation en conditions quasi-réalistes. La première évaluation fait appel à une méthodologie classique similaire à celle utilisée en laboratoire d'utilisabilité, et la seconde simule les conditions d'une expérimentation de terrain. Notre objectif est de valider en amont la méthodologie destinée aux expérimentations en situation réelle. ABSTRACTThis article focuses on usability testing of mobile devices "in the wild". We are interested in ensuring the methodological validity of these analyses. We so implemented an original approach which consists in carrying out a meta-evaluation of two evaluations of the same quasi-realistic experiment. The first one uses a traditional methodology similar to usability laboratory settings. The second one mimics the conditions of experiments carried out "in the wild". Our objective is to validate -in advance-the methodology for usability evaluations "in the wild".

PurposeThe number of older persons in industrialized countries is steadily increasing. Seniors living alone are more numerous, and we must find solutions that will allow them to continue to stay at home comfortably and safely. Smart housings can be one of these solutions. One of the biggest challenges in ambient assisted living (AAL) is to develop smart homes that anticipate and respond to the needs of the inhabitants. Given the diverse profiles of the older adult population, it will therefore be essential to facilitate interaction with the smart home through systems that respond naturally to voice commands rather than using tactile interfaces. Method The first step in our study was to evaluate how well ambient assistive speech technology is received by the target population. We report on a user evaluation assessing acceptance and fear of this new technology. The experiment aimed at testing three important aspects of speech interaction: voice command, communication with the outside world, home automation system interrupting a person's activity. Participants were 7 older persons (71-88 years old), 7 relatives and 3 professional carers; the experiments were conducted in a smart home with a voice command using a Wizard-of-Oz technique. The second step in our study was related to the adaptation of speech recognition technologies to the older adult population. Judging by the literature this has not been extensively studied. In fact, it is known that industrialized speech recognition system models are not adapted to seniors but to other categories of the population. In order to do this we recorded a specific speech corpus (voice-age) with 7 older adults (70 to 89 years old) reading sentences (a total of 4 hours of speech). A second corpus (ERES38) of free talking (18 hours of speech) was recorded by 23 speakers (68-98 years old). These corpora were analyzed in a semi -automatic manner to reveal the aged-voice characteristics. Results & Discussion Regarding the technical aspect, it appears that some phonemes are more affected by age than others. Thus, a specific adaptation of the acoustic models for ASR is required. Regarding the acceptance aspect, voice interfaces appear to have a great potential to ease daily living for older adults and frail persons and would be better accepted than other, more intrusive, solutions. By considering still healthy and independent older persons in the user evaluation, one interesting finding was overall acceptance provided the system is not conducive to a lazy lifestyle by taking control of everything. This particular concern must be addressed in the development of smart homes that support daily living by stressing the ability to control the daily routine rather than altering it. This study shows the great interest of voice interfaces to develop efficient solution to enable the growing number of older persons to continue to live in their own homes as long as possible.

context. This system was evaluated in a dedicated flat thanks to some experiments. This chapter will then conclude with a discussion on the interest of the speech modality concerning the Ambient Assisted Living.