User-involvement in Gerontechnology:early stage user-understanding to empower technology development
Jan Rietsema & Anne-Sophie Melenhorst
Eindhoven University of Technology, Institute for Gerontechnology,
PO Box 513, NL-5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
tel: +31 40 247 4658, fax: +31 40 244 3335, e-mail:j.rietsema@bmgt.tue.nl
1. gerontechnology
Gerontechnology is a multi-disciplinary area of research and development into technology which is directed towards aspirations and opportunities for older people. The emphasis is on the creation of innovative technology motivated by the specific nature of the living and working situations of older people, but it also encompasses research on how to optimise existing technology by enhancing functional abilities and compensating for declining capacities. The latter includes the Assistive Technology sector.
Gerontechnology is directed towards an innovative technological environment for older people that enhances the performance of them in new roles. The new roles of older people encompasses changed work-, leisure-, living-, health- and social situations. Consequently, research into all these aspects of life supports gerontechnology.
Technology is a double-edged sword since it can help people to realise their potential, but it can also disadvantage people by failing to take their needs into account. Gerontechnology has the rationale of maintaining or improving the control of older people over the technological environment. In a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, we are responsible to make sure that a large segment of the population is not excluded just because of their year of birth.
2. target group
There does not exist a single target group for gerontechnology. Sharing a common chronological age does not make for homogeneity among the older people. Indeed, the opposite is true. Differences in life experience, exposure to diseases, and differences in lifestyle make for greater heterogeneity among older people than among the young. Even though there is no single elderly group, demography and statistical evidence indicates that the majority of the older people nowadays, and increasingly so in the future, are mentally and physically healthy autonomous adults.
A higher level of development, as a result of better education, is creating a generation of older people, that has 'discovered' the possibilities for opportunities. This period of life is also one of liberation from former duties and obligations, that can be employed for self-development and expansions (Dittmann-Kohli, 1990). This period is referred to as the third age, or 'the crown of life' (Laslett, 1989).
3. user-orientation
It will be clear from the description of the objectives of gerontechnology and the target group that the users (older people) are the central factor when the technological progress to improve the quality of life is being considered. The unique feature of a user-centred technology is that people's aspirations and special characteristics are identified. This can be done by both feed-back and feed-forward. This distinction is comparable with the one between involving the user and understanding the user. Both are needed, and although feed-back is discussed in great detail in the human factor literature, we would like to emphasize that feed-forward can be much more powerful.
3.1 feed-back
Feed-back is the best developed process of user-involvement in all steps of the current Product Creation Process (PCP). It means evaluation by users of available products, or prototypes. Many methods are available for active user-involvement and are applied in the various TIDE projects (Placencia Porrero and Puig de la Bellacasa, 1995). In the Netherlands a three-year governmental stimulation programme 'Gerontechnology' is aiming at making the business community aware of these methods. The programme is structured around pilot projects and many user-friendly products and educational experiences resulted from this programme (Bosma et al., 1996; Bosma et al., 1997)
The existing methods, like user trials, field trials, observations, questionnaires, registration of questions at help desks, group discussions, task analysis, and early prototype testing are well documented in the human factor literature (Poulson et al, 1996; Helander et al., 1997).
The successful optimisation of existing technology only occurs through the appropriate use of these methods throughout the design process. However, the creation of innovative technology motivated by the specific nature of the living and working situations of older people requires to understand the user, before going down the path of technical development and design. This is referred to as feed-forward.
3.2 feed-forward
Observations of older people not using facilities although these seemed to be useful in their daily living environments, give raise to an important question: why do people not use these wonderful tools?
In a questionnaire evaluating a product X, the items 'Would you use this product in your daily living?' or 'Could it be useful to you?' are positively answered by the potential users. In experimental situations they easily use the product. The ergonomic features are optimised involving the users' feed-back. However, this can apparently not guarantee the functionality of the product in real life.
An example of the above described phenomena is the ticket-machines at railway stations in the Netherlands. These devices are developed and extensively tested by users before located at the railway stations. It is still observed that elderly travelers are not using these machines frequently and that they experience a threshold. This can be explained by the assumption that the concept of buying a ticket from a machine does not fit the 'mental model' older people have.
Applications of technology to which this happens, probably were developed and evaluated in a situation in which the considerations of people in their daily living were not taken into account. Feed-forward methods can be powerful part of the solution of the problem.
Feed-forward has two paths. First older people can communicate aspirations and preferences. Second, information about the aspirations, preferences and capacities of older people can be collected through multi-disciplinary scientific studies of this group of people. Aspirations and preferences are abstract data and the identification of it is complicated. It is probably deducible from the behaviour of the elderly persons.
Existing methods to study human behaviour are not dedicated to technology development. One method that probably can be used as a starting point is the Personal Project Analysis (Little, 1983; 1989). Personal Projects are extended sets of personally relevant action and cover the conscious articulations of what a person is trying to do or what he or she is engaged in or currently concerned about. Because Personal Projects exist of everyday life goals and trivial pursuits they likely are good indicators for concrete behaviour and the analysis may serve as a vehicle to push technological developments in the right direction. The development of feed-forward methods to classify needs, preferences and aspirations of older people in relation to development and use of technical equipment, is one of the major thrusts in our research.
4. conclusion
Gerontechnology has as its main objective that the technological environment should support the aspirations of the older people and is enhancing the quality of life. The strategy to achieve this objective must include a change from technology development driven by technical feasibility towards one driven by the knowledge about behaviour of the user.
A technological application should serve as an extension of the usual behaviour people perform and should be recognisable as such. In that case, the starting point of the design cycle is the daily living and the spontaneous behaviour that older people perform. Although it might seem a cumbersome procedure, evaluating the aspirations of the user before a product-idea even exists can help us to avoid that products in spite of a positive user evaluation are not recognised by the user as being in line with the things he or she already aspired.
The term user-involvement is widely used to encourage this change from technology driven towards user driven. The currently used definition of user-involvement should be adapted by explicitly including understanding the user in some detail (feed-forward). This understanding phase must of course continue during all steps of the design cycle, incorporating the user as an active collaborator in the process.
More research is necessary to develop feed-forward methods to fill in the lack of knowledge of the aspirations, behaviour, preferences and characteristics of the elderly user in relation to technological developments.
5. references
Bosma, E.S., Giezen-Biegstraaten, L.M.G.J., Van den Heuvel, M and Stephan, C. (Eds.) (1996) Gerontechnology project: first year results. Groningen: KITTZ.
Bosma, E.S., Giezen-Biegstraaten, L.M.G.J., Van den Heuvel, M, Marijnissen, B. and Stephan, C. (Eds.) (1996) Ouderentechnologie: Resultaten 96/97. Den Haag: Senter.
Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1990) The construction of meaning in old age: possibilities and constraints. Ageing and Society, 10, 279-294
Helander, M.G., Landauer, Th.K. and Prabhu, P.V. (1997) Handbook of human computer interaction. 2nd edition. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Laslett, P. (1989) A fresh map of life: the emergence of he Third Age. London: Weidengfeld and Nicolson.
Little, B.R. (1983) Personal projects: A rationale and method for investigation. Environment and behavior, 15, 273-277
Little, B.R. (1989) Personal projects analysis: trivial pursuits, magnificent obsessions and the serach for coherence. In : Personality psychology: recent trends and emerging directions by Buss, D.M. and Cantor, N. (Eds). New York: Springer-Verlag. 15-31
Placencia Porrero, I. and Puig de la Bellacasa, R. (1995) The European context for assistive technology. Proceeding 2nd TIDE Congress. Amsterdam: IOS.
Poulson, D., Ashby, M. and Richardson, S. (Eds) (1996) Userfit: A practical handbook on user-centred design for Assistive Technology. Brussels-Luxembourg: ECSC-EC-EAEC.