The Easyline+ project: evaluation of a user interface developed to enhance independent living of elderly and disabled people

Abstract

This paper reports the usability evaluation of interfaces developed to enable elderly and disabled people interact remotely with kitchen appliances in the home to enhance their independent living. A number of evaluation exercises were undertaken throughout the project's development, including user-participative workshops and focus groups. This paper focuses on the summative usability evaluation exercise, which comprised a laboratory-based study in a simulated home environment, with a view to determining the appropriateness of employing this approach with potentially vulnerable participants. The study involved 27 participants interacting with the user interface. Their behaviour was observed and recorded, and their interaction with the system was analysed. They were also given a postsession questionnaire, where their opinions of the usability of the interface were solicited. The results of the usability testing were positive, and insight has been gained into how products of this nature can be further improved. The experience of conducting laboratory-based studies with vulnerable users was positive and led to propose in this paper a set of guidelines for future work in evaluating usability for work in this domain.

A Review of Contemporary Work on the Ethics of Ambient Assisted Living Technologies for People with Dementia

“…Despite the high hopes invested in AAL technologies, research is still ongoing and rollout is at an early stage. Although many research projects are underway worldwide, including projects like Easyline+ (Picking et al, 2012) and Dem@Care (McHugh et al, 2012), very few clinical trials have yet been completed and rolled out to a large population.…”

“…Thus, the form and consequences of dependency linked with the use of assistive technologies extend only to the dependency on a technical instrument (Remmers, 2010). Picking et al (2012) mention that researchers welcome the development of a certain amount of dependency on a product, if the product provides support for independent living. After all, according to Remmers (2010), such self-induced dependencies on artefacts are typical of modern civilisation.…”

“…This approach could also be referred to as 'proactive design' (Duquenoy, 2004), as a holistic approach or perspective (Kosta, Pitkänen, et al, 2010), as value sensitive design (Wright, 2011), ergonomic design (Wallace et al, 2010), or simply as ethical design (Kosta, Pitkanen, et al, 2008). The involvement of (vulnerable) users in the design process can be maintained by means such as role-playing (Picking et al, 2012), drama (Sponselee et al, 2008) or acted performance (Newell et al, 2011), and interviews (Maier and Kempter, 2009). The feedback from users for design is crucial because every target user is a domain expert (Allen et al, 2008).…”

“…Borenstein and Pearson (2010), quoting Oosterlaken, emphasises that the details of design are morally significant. Details such as a step-by-step design (Aarts et al, 2007;Burleson et al, 2012;Pulli et al, 2012), or large and coloured buttons (O'Neill, Parente, et al, 2011;Picking et al, 2012), and the overall intuitiveness (Maguire et al, 2011) of a system are preferred if these are helpful for the end-users. The reported difficulties of elderly users of ICT are usually about hardware issues, inconsistent interface, screen size, height mobility, information interpretation or the overall mental (rather complex) model applied (Lorenzen-Huber et al, 2011;Wallace et al, 2010).…”

Improving the Design of Ambient Intelligence Systems: Guidelines Based on a Systematic Review

“…Related concepts Ambient intelligence ("ambient assisted living" OR "ambient intelligence" OR "smart home" OR "smart care" OR "smart service" OR "smart homecare" OR "ambient-intelligence environment" OR "smart environment" OR "home environment" OR "smart space" OR "home automation") AND Human-computer interaction ("usability" OR "accessibility" OR "human-computer interface" OR "user interface" OR "user interaction" OR "human-computer interaction" OR "user experience") AND Guidelines ("principles design" OR "guidelines" OR "heuristics" OR "rules") Picking et al 2012;Rugnone et al 2007; Shirehjini and Semsar 2017; Yilmaz 2019), 5 papers carried out end-users evaluations (Buzzi et al, 2019;Fogli et al, 2017;Goumopoulos & Mavrommati, 2020;Hafidh et al, 2017;Maguire, 2019), 4 papers used surveys (Buzzi et al, 2019;Hafidh et al, 2017;Huxohl et al, 2019;Licona and Droegehorn (2017)), 2 papers reported using interviews (Brich et al, 2017;Cha et al, 2019), and one paper mentioned a heuristic evaluation (Licona & Droegehorn 2017). All reported evaluations were carried out with users, having on average 34 users evaluating each studyranging from 3 users (Rugnone et al (2007)) to 136 users (Brauner et al, 2017) to 136 users (Brauner et al, 2017) involved in each evaluation.…”