Home-based communication system for older adults and their remote family

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Abstract

As in many Latin–American countries, in Mexico many older adults live alone as a result of the migration of one or more of their relatives, mostly to the USA. Thus, not only do they live alone, but they might seldom see these relatives for long periods, even though they often depend on them financially. With the goal of designing appropriate communication technology for seniors and their relatives experiencing this situation, we conducted interviews and evaluated scenarios and prototypes to reveal the practical ways they maintain emotional ties despite the distance. Based on those findings, we envisioned a communication system through which seniors and their relatives can maintain close social ties by sharing information, personal reminiscences and stories. We found that older adults perceived the system as a richer, natural form of communication with their relatives that could facilitate their integration into the networks that currently connect members of their families.

Introduction

Growing old is often accompanied by the loss of close companionship which can lead in older adults to feelings of loneliness and depression and to a decrease in quality of life and other health problems (You & Lee, 2006). The loneliness faced by older adults is a consequence of changes in family structure, such as the growing of children who left their birth home to form their own family; the reduction of family size; and the migration of the youngest looking for better opportunities.

In countries like Mexico, the practical notion of family expands well beyond direct siblings and its members typically maintain constant communication and awareness about each other’s lives. This kind of relationship pattern is often endangered by the migration of one or more family members to other countries (mainly the USA). Emigration is more pervasive in regions with fewer opportunities for jobs and education, and it is, at least partially, because of the work of those living away that these communities can survive. The economical support that Mexican migrants give to their communities is well documented in the case of those living in the USA. Every year the ‘expelling’ regions receive billions of dollars in remittances, mainly for family consumption and community projects (Merz, 2005). Consequently, migrant’s need to communicate with their families comes naturally as a result of the fundamental role they play in their maintenance.

For many years, communication between migrant and their families was done by telephone. Lately, with the proliferation of the Internet, migrants have more alternatives for staying in touch with the daily life of their loved ones and their communities. This change in use of communication technology can be seen on other diasporic movements. For example, previous studies of people from Trinidad and Tobago (Miller & Slater, 2000), or Canadian provinces (Hiller & Franz, 2004) serve to illustrate the benefits of e-mail distribution lists, synchronous chat forums, and web pages in promoting a sense of identity and belonging, maintaining the cohesion between members of dispersed communities and providing alternative, unique, and vivid information of the daily life of the communities.

With the purpose of enhancing awareness among family members, other studies have explored the use of novel forms of communication which go beyond personal computers. For instance, Markopoulos, Romero, van Baren, IJsselsteijn, de Ruyter, and Farshchian (2004) reported a touch based system interfacing with mobile phones. Their system allowed family members to feel more in touch, think about each other more often, to be more aware of what their families are doing, and, to share more of their own daily experiences. Likewise, the Gust of Presence, a bowl that allows people to share images of objects, enables a two-way notification of presence for children living away from their parents, letting them know, for instance, when the children have arrived home (Keller, Hoog, & Stappers, 2004). The project revealed that the inclusion of technology embedded in the environment can connect people emotionally even though its functionality may be limited for information exchange purposes.

In spite of the potential value of communication technologies for providing social connectedness among family members living apart, it is still unclear if the current systems and their interfaces are optimal for the particular needs of older adults. Current interfaces for Internet services (e.g. e-mail software clients), can be complex and prevent senior users from adopting them on a regular basis (Czaja & Hiltz, 2005). On the other hand, a solution that creates a new, independent communication system might face difficulties in being adopted. The cost of accessing and regularly checking a new system can become a practical barrier for members of the family and translate into increasing the isolation of older adults. We argue that we need communication systems for older adults that provide better interfaces and serve as bridges to reach members of the family using standard tools such as e-mail or cellular telephones – a system that co-habits with what exists but facilitates access for senior users.

This paper discusses the results of designing and evaluating a home-based communication system that was designed to support elderly people (i) to feel more engaged and connected with their relatives living abroad by providing a richer form of communication; (ii) to interact more easily with members of their families using e-mail through a bridge interface to that platform; and (iii) to experience better comfort when using the technology by providing a more natural form of interaction with a Tablet PC. Our study and results are relevant to understand the mediating role of technology in maintaining emotional ties among family members, but particularly within the context experienced by users over 60 years old, which is a sector of the population experiencing an accelerated growth.

Section snippets

Background

The aging of population is a phenomenon faced by many nations. It is estimated that over the next decades the world populations will significantly age as a consequence of large birth cohorts during the 1950s and 1960s and a worldwide decline in fertility since the 1970s. The percentage of elderly increased from 5.2 in 1950 to 6.2 in 1995; it is projected that by 2050 one out of ten people worldwide will be 65 years of age or older (Heilig, 1996).

In Mexico, as in other countries, the elderly

Methodology

The methodology we followed is based on the User Centered Design approach, which helped us to identify elders communication needs, and understand their feelings related to their separation from their children. As shown in Fig. 1, once we had an initial understanding of the ageing population in Mexico, the loneliness that elders face due to ageing and the migration phenomenon, we followed an ethnographic investigation of the practices of communication of elders with family members living abroad.

System Implementation

We developed a fully functional first instantiation of the communication system based on the Family Newspaper metaphor illustrated in Fig. 2. The architecture of the electronic Family Newspaper is depicted in Fig. 3 and consists of several layers (Santana, Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Quiroa, Andrade, & Favela, 2005). A Content management System, named Codice CMS, enables the creation of a weblog from which the Family Newspaper is created. The components that enable to dynamically create the Family

Hands-on Evaluation

With the first version of the system we conducted an evaluation with a group of older adults. The system was implemented on a Tablet PC and we used both the pen and the embedded keyboard as input devices. In order to capture pictures we used a cell phone with a built-in camera. The purpose of our evaluation was to let older adults use the system in their home so they could conduct a set of typical tasks and give us in situ feedback. During the evaluation we also explored issues aimed at

Discussion

Many nations are facing a demographic transition due to the increase of the elderly population. Nuclear and extended family members have traditionally cared for elders at home. However, several changes have occurred in home living conditions due the international migration in which mostly young people between the ages of 15 and 30 migrate looking for better opportunities, leaving their parents and grandparents behindError! Bookmark not defined. It has been estimated that between 1990 and 2005,

Conclusions and Future Work

Our experience designing and evaluating the communication system indicated that our approach is well received by older adults. The system would provide a more natural and richer mechanism to let them access the Internet infrastructure to communicate with their families abroad. Because in Mexico, as an example of the reality experienced by many Latin-American developing countries, migration is a social and economical phenomenon that is not likely to change in the short term, we believe that

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the comments and feedback received from the Editors of this special issue. We thank all the persons that participated as subjects during the study. We also thank the UABC students that helped to carry out the system evaluation, and in particular, to Luz Ma. Colsa, for implementing the message board system. This work was funded by UABC and CONACYT under contract J51582-R.

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