skip to main content
10.1145/3429290.3429294acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesindiahciConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Design Opportunities for Supporting Elderly in India in Managing their Health and Fitness Post-COVID-19

Published: 27 December 2020 Publication History

Abstract

The percentage of elderly population in India has been increasing in recent years and so have been lifestyle-related conditions such as cardiovascular diseases. In order to live an active and healthy life, it is important for elderly to manage their routine health and fitness activities such as exercising, following nutrition and diet etc. This need has become pressing after the COVID-19 lockdowns. Though there are many technology artefacts designed to motivate and help elderly people live a healthy lifestyle, adoption of such artefacts remains low for this population. In this paper, we present findings from interviews with 15 elderly people related to their needs and preferences about health and fitness, and their attitudes and knowledge about using technology to support these. Our main finding was that though there is an increase in technology usage by the elderly, much of it is restricted to communication and content consumption and not towards managing health and fitness. After the interview, we demonstrated selected applications and devices to the participants in order to understand their perceptions on existing technology in the market in managing their health and fitness. Based on participants’ perceptions towards technology and their needs related to routine health and fitness, we highlight some design opportunities including smart trackers, wearable bands, localized food and recipe app, language-based personalization and setting up “tech clinics” to help elderly to manage their health and fitness. 

References

[1]
World Population Prospects: Key findings & advance tables. 2015 Revision. Retrieved June 15, 2020 from https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf  
[2]
Helbostad, J. L. 2017. Mobile health applications to promote active and healthy ageing. Sensors, 17(3), 622.
[3]
The changing patterns of cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors in the states of India: The Global Burden of Disease Study. 2018. Lancet, 6 (12), E1339-E1351.
[4]
World Health Organization . World Report on Ageing and Health. WHO; Geneva, Switzerland: 2020.
[5]
Kohl, H.W. 2012. The Pandemic of Physical Inactivity: Global Action for Public Health. Lancet. 380:294–305.
[6]
Barua, K., Borah, M., Deka, C., and Kakati, R. 2017. Morbidity pattern and health-seeking behavior of elderly in urban slums: A cross-sectional study in Assam, India. Journal of family medicine and primary care, 6(2), 345.
[7]
World Health Organization. Global Observatory for eHealth Series. 2011. mHealth: New Horizons for Health through Mobile Technologies. Retrieved December 24, 2018 from https://www.who.int/goe/publications/goe_mhealth_web.pdf
[8]
Boulos M.N.K., 2011. How Smartphones are Changing the Face of Mobile and Participatory Healthcare: An Overview. Biomed. Eng. Online, 10-24.
[9]
Kalimullah, K., and Sushmitha, D. 2017. Influence of design elements in mobile applications on user experience of elderly people. Procedia computer science, 113, 352-359.
[10]
Eriksen, S. 2014. Health in hand: Putting mHealth design in context. IEEE 2nd International Workshop on Usability and Accessibility Focused Requirements Engineering (UsARE). IEEE, 14:36-39.
[11]
Hoque, R. and Sorwar. G. 2017. Understanding factors influencing the adoption of mHealth by the elderly: An extension of the UTAUT model. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 101, 75–84.
[12]
Spann, A. and Stewart E. 2018. Barriers and Facilitators of Older people's m-Health Usage: A Qualitative Review of Older People's Lives. Huma Technology, 14(3), 264–296.
[13]
Bennett, J. A. 2009. Differences between older and younger cancer survivors in seeking cancer information and using complementary/alternative medicine. J Gen Intern Med. 24(10), 1089–1094.
[14]
Meischke, H. 2005. Do older adults use the Internet for information on heart attacks? Results from a survey of seniors in King County, Washington. Heart Lung. 34 (1), 3–12.
[15]
Haverhals, L. M. 2011 Older adults with multi-morbidity: medication management processes and design implications for personal health applications. J Med Internet Res. 13 (2).
[16]
COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown in India. Retrieved June 20, 2020 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_lockdown_in_India
[17]
COVID-19: Resources for Care for Older Persons. Retrieved June 29, 2020 from https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-on-on-covid-19-for-older-people
[18]
Statista Research Department. 2019. Share of Mobile Operating Systems in India 2012-2019. Retrieved January 15, 2020 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/262157/market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-in-india/
[19]
Google Play. Retrieved January 28, 2020 from https://play.google.com/store
[20]
Best for Seniors Online. 2020. The Best Fitness and Activity Trackers for Seniors (2020 Update). Retrieved March 12, 2020 from https://bestforseniors.online/best-fitness-trackers-for-seniors/
[21]
Mobility with Love. 2020. Top 7 Best Fitness Trackers for Seniors: Easiest Fitness Trackers to Use. Retrieved March 12, 2020 from https://www.mobilitywithlove.com/fitness-trackers-for-seniors/
[22]
Situation Analysis of the Elderly in India. 2011. Retrieved September 05, 2020 from http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/elderly_in_india.pdf
[23]
Gibbs, G. (2008). Analyzing qualitative data. Sage publications.
[24]
Joshi, A. 2014. Supporting treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS in resource limited settings with IVRs. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1595-1604.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Talk2Care: An LLM-based Voice Assistant for Communication between Healthcare Providers and Older AdultsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36596258:2(1-35)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
  • (2024)Charting the COVID Long Haul Experience - A Longitudinal Exploration of Symptoms, Activity, and Clinical AdherenceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642827(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)“So, Should I Walk Today or Not?” Understanding Concerns and Queries on Health and Fitness Among Indian Older AdultsProceedings of the 14th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-981-97-4335-3_2(23-49)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
IndiaHCI '20: Proceedings of the 11th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
November 2020
129 pages
ISBN:9781450389440
DOI:10.1145/3429290
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 December 2020

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. COVID-19
  2. Design Opportunities
  3. Elderly
  4. Health and Fitness
  5. Technology Adoption
  6. Virtual Interviews

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Conference

IndiaHCI 2020

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 33 of 93 submissions, 35%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)58
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)7
Reflects downloads up to 27 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Talk2Care: An LLM-based Voice Assistant for Communication between Healthcare Providers and Older AdultsProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36596258:2(1-35)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
  • (2024)Charting the COVID Long Haul Experience - A Longitudinal Exploration of Symptoms, Activity, and Clinical AdherenceProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642827(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)“So, Should I Walk Today or Not?” Understanding Concerns and Queries on Health and Fitness Among Indian Older AdultsProceedings of the 14th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1007/978-981-97-4335-3_2(23-49)Online publication date: 3-Aug-2024
  • (2023)Design of User-Friendly Smartphone Settings Configuration and Troubleshooting Features for Indian Senior CitizensProceedings of the 35th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference10.1145/3638380.3638393(245-256)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
  • (2023)"We are half-doctors": Family Caregivers as Boundary Actors in Chronic Disease ManagementProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35795457:CSCW1(1-29)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Senior Citizens and Smartphones: Identifying User Segments in Urban Middle-Class IndiaDesign in the Era of Industry 4.0, Volume 110.1007/978-981-99-0293-4_38(475-484)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2023
  • (2022)Satisfaction Levels of Young Urban Residents With Public Sports Services in China During the COVID-19 EpidemicFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2022.90541713Online publication date: 10-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Wearable Activity Trackers in Managing Routine Health and Fitness of Indian Older Adults: Exploring Barriers to UsageNordic Human-Computer Interaction Conference10.1145/3546155.3546645(1-11)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
  • (2022)Examining Identity as a Variable of Health Technology Research for Older Adults: A Systematic ReviewProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517621(1-24)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2022)Barriers and Facilitators to Technology Among Older Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review Using Thematic AnalysisHuman Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Design, Interaction and Technology Acceptance10.1007/978-3-031-05581-2_33(466-484)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2022

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media