Wearable Technology and Visual Reality Application for Healthcare Systems

This study developed a virtual reality interactive game with smart wireless wearable technology for healthcare of elderly users. The proposed wearable system uses its intelligent and wireless features to collect electromyography signals and upload them to a cloud database for further analysis. The electromyography signals are then analyzed for the users’ muscle fatigue, health, strength, and other physiological conditions. The average slope maximum So and Chan (ASM S & C) algorithm is integrated in the proposed system to effectively detect the quantity of electromyography peaks, and the accuracy is as high as 95%. The proposed system can promote the health conditions of elderly users, and motivate them to acquire new knowledge of science and technology.

Usability Barriers for Elderly Users in Smartphone App Usage: An Analytical Hierarchical Process-Based Prioritization

With the latest technology, smartphone's profound impact may be valuable for the users in different age groups, but the elders always face difficulties while adopting the technology. The usability of a smartphone application is essential when the target audience is elderly users, as the designer did not satisfy the specific requirements. The importance of smartphone application and the issues that the elders are facing in using smartphones have motivated us to provide a list of barriers that could negatively impact the usability of smartphone applications in elderly people. This research focused on identifying the barriers that affect the usability of smartphones, especially among elders. A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to identify and validate the barriers. After that, we apply the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) on identified barriers of all barriers’ groups to find out their relative importance. A total of fifteen barriers were identified through the SLR approach, and the barriers were then classified and assigned to one of the five categories. It is expected that the barriers that have been recognized will help the designers of smartphone applications in the early stages of designing applications. The result of the study will help in dealing with the issues related to the elder community and will make the designers develop smartphone applications accordingly.

Perancangan Antarmuka Berdasarkan Evaluasi Usabilitas Penggunaan Aplikasi KlikDokter Untuk Pralansia dan Lansia

The situation and condition of the spread of Covid-19 in Indonesia have forced everyone to reduce the intensity of going out of the house, including activities related to the need for health services. Therefore, a solution is needed so that people can meet their health needs without leaving the house. Taking into account that the elderly as the community group that is most vulnerable to contracting the virus and has the highest mortality rate, it can be said that the elderly is the group of people who most need online health services. Along with the growing penetration of internet usage and the increasing number of smartphone ownership in Indonesia, m-health is the right choice to help people access health services online via smartphones. KlikDokter is an example of m-health or a mobile-based application that provides various online health services. However, it was found that there were complaints that the KlikDokter application was too complicated and difficult for the elderly to use. From this problem, a usability test was finally carried out on the KlikDokter application interface, to identify what interface elements in the KlikDokter application were difficult for elderly users. The research respondents were divided into two groups with 16 and 17 people respectively. The first group is the elderly group aged >60 years. And the second group is the pre-elderly group with ages between 45 to 59 years. A pre-elderly group is a comparison group (control group). This test is carried out by measuring several aspects of usability, namely effectiveness, efficiency, user satisfaction, error, and cognitive load.

Signs of Decline? Prostheses and the Ageing Subject

This chapter reveals that the cultural association of cosmetic prostheses with ageing stems, at least in part, from satirical sources that paradoxically both bulwark and mock the hegemony of physical wholeness and youth. Emphasizing the extent to which preferences for youth were intertwined with demands for physical completeness, this chapter exposes how the dominance of these two physical states was undermined by stories that either ridicule the process of concealment for elderly users or present unlikely prostheticized heroes in unconventional ways. The chapter draws from genres such as the Gothic, sensation fiction, and imperial adventure fiction. It argues that, despite their differences, the depictions of ageing prosthesis users selected challenge the dominance of physical wholeness/youth by laughing at the absurd results that these demands effected.

Interaction Preference Differences between Elderly and Younger Exergame Users

Existing motion capture technology can efficiently track whole-body motion and be applied to many areas of the body. This whole-body interaction design has gained the attention of many researchers. However, few scholars have studied its suitability for elderly users. We were interested in exercise-based whole-body interactive games, which can provide mental and physical exercise for elderly users. We used heuristic evaluation to measure participants’ actions during exergame tasks and analyzed preference differences between elderly and younger users through the distribution of actions in four dimensions. We found that age affected the actions performed by users in exergame tasks. We discuss the mental model of elderly users during the process of performing these tasks and put forward some suggestions for interactive actions. This model and these suggestions theoretically have guiding significance for the research and application of exergame design for elderly users and may help designers develop more effective exergames or other whole-body interaction interfaces suitable for elderly users.

Analysis of Smart Home Technology Acceptance and Preference for Elderly in Dubai, UAE

The elderly are the most predicted users for smart home technology in the United Arab Emirates and the population over 65 is expected to increase to 24.3% by 2030. Despite the rapid development of smart home technology, research has been mainly focused on technology development. To encourage conservative elderly users, however, smart home technology should be implemented for UAE elderly users to accept and integrate it into their daily lives. The objective of this paper is to analyze the preferences and needs of smart home technologies to understand the behaviors of UAE elderly users, and the factors affecting the acceptance of technology. As a methodology, a survey and interview were conducted for 110 people in their 40s and 60s and a total of 105 valid survey responses were collected and used as data for frequency, mean, cross-analysis, independent sample t-test, one-way variance analysis, and multiple regression analysis with IBM SPSS statistics 27. The results showed that 67.0% of UAE elderly users have chronic diseases such as high blood pressure (16.2%), heart disease (3.8%), diabetes (32.4%), or arthritis (10.5%). Therefore, smart home technology for health management is inevitable to improve overall lifestyles. It was statistically proven that UAE elderly users want automatic fall detection in the living room (39.0%) and bedroom (25.7%). Lifestyle monitoring in living room (44.7%) and bedroom (18.1%); the elderly preferred living room most for daily life assistance (36.2%), environmental control (50.5%), health and biometric monitoring (49.5%), and video conferencing (82.9%). In the case of sensors, elderly preferred the switch at the entrance (36.2%), and motion detecting sensors (42.9%), video cameras (56.2%), and voice recognition (50.5%) sensors in the living room. However, UAE elderly users do not think smart home technology can protect their privacy. It is found that age group and computer technology affinity are the most influential variables and UAE elderly users have an anxiety about technology, which influenced the acceptance of smart home technology.