A LivingLab Approach to Involve Elderly in the Design of Smart TV Applications Offering Communication Services

Abstract : Aging is a new step of life with a lot of changes that could be related with physical, cognitive and social frailties. Rather than addressing autonomy and dependency issues for which a variety of assistive technologies has been designed, our aim is to define how ICTs could alleviate elderly loneliness, in order to cope with their social frailty. We make the hypothesis that TV is a good medium for this purpose and we design Smart TV applications dedicated to foster the social interaction among elderly. We adopt a living lab approach, which assure us of an early engagement of the end-users.