Establishing shared positive moments between elderly caretakers and their families

Master thesis (2020)

Authors

T. Ho Industrial Design Engineering

Contributors

M.H. Sonneveld Applied Ergonomics and Design - IDE (mentor)
F. Sleeswijk Visser Design Conceptualization and Communication - IDE (mentor)
Faculty
Industrial Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering
Copyright: © 2020 Tsai Cheng Ho
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Published Date

28-08-2020

Language

English

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Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

In Europe and Asia, people face a significant aging society(Gilroy, R., 2007). In Asia, Taiwan underlies one of the most aging countries (Chan, A., 2005). To give care to elderly citizens, some Taiwanese elderly people live at home, while others live in a care institution. For those who live in institutions, they may lose the connection with their family member. Some problems were defined in the context:
 1) Due to distance, busy work, or Covid-19, when visiting is not accessible; young people can' see caretaker.
 2) Elderly people may not be familiar with a touchscreen, which lead to a barrier with younger people
 3) Residents who newly moved to an institution lose the connection with their family members, and have less and less shared moments with their family
The objective led to the design goal :Establishing shared positive moments between an elderly caretaker and family members.This thesis involves exploration, conceptualization, and evaluation phases. An iterative design approach was taken to gain relevant insights from the user and context in the conceptualization phase. Several experience prototypes (Buchenau & Suri, 2000) were designed and made to understand the current context and user experience, evaluate ideas, and communicate with stakeholders.The exploratory activities had lead to the main insights:
 1) Elderly people who live apart from their families experience a happiness drop after a big family meeting.
 2) The camera position affects the engagement of a video call.
 3) Elderly caretakers rely on a caretaker's help to contact. They may lose their one on one personal relationship after they lose their autonomy of reaching people.
 4) The usability problem for Elderly people to interact with a smartphone can be lead by the lack of haptic feedback on buttons, less agility on fingers, and the massive information on the screen.
 5) Remote talking with visual reference is a handy way for young people; it triggers more shared topics to talk about with elderly people.
 6) Elderly people can be engaged more in family members' life from video calling.
Thus, I envision the future scenario to have more tiny enjoyable moments for an elderly caretaker to establish shared moments by video calling with family members."Tiny Moments" is a product-service system design that comes out of the project. It involves a control panel and a software concept. It establishes the connection for elderly caretakers and their families enables more engagement for each other's lives.The research led to five scenarios of use in the future:
 1) Providing for confidence with a better look for an elderly caretaker
 2) Remote selfie with beautiful scenes
 3) Picture as a reference to talk about (Family members)
 4) Activate a link again
 5) Polite refuse when busy
For elderly caretakers, the shared positive moments can bring them to the novelty of family members' lives, have more bonding from loved ones; for family members, they bring memorable moments for them. For family members, it brings the moments, and the pictures can be the memories in the future.