Hello, my name is Yolande strengers, and I'm presenting this this paper titled, "isn't this marvelous" on behalf of my co authors,
Melissa Duque, Michael Mortimer, Sarah Pink, Rex Martin, Larissa Nicholls, Ben Horan, Alicia Eugene, and Sue Thomson.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands that I'm recording this talk from today,
the Bunurong/ Boon wurrung people of the Kulin nations, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
This paper analyzes the role of curiosity, play and experimentation in supporting positive
wellbeing outcomes for older adults living with smart home devices.
The research is based on a trial of smart devices that took place in 2019 and
2020 with 23 households, living in regional Australia, including Edna in the picture here.
The project was a partnership between aged care provider McLean care, and two universities, Monash and Deakin University.
The research was funded by the Australian Government's Department of Health, through
a Commonwealth Jome Support Programme innovation grant.
In the short talk, I'm going to introduce you to the research and the project that inform this paper,
and share some of our key findings and recommendations.
Our project responds to an established and growing body of research which focuses on designing digital technologies with and for older adults.
As noted by previous scholars, studies of seniors have tended to adopt a view of
aging as a process of decline, and have typically characterized older adults by their deficits
compared to other able bodied or younger people.
Some HCI researchers have attempted to bust common aging myths associated with
this discourse of deficits, or challenge the deficit assumption by exploring people's competencies
with emerging technologies as they age by emphasizing their creativity and resourcefulness.
This study is situated in this body of positive ageing literature and contributes to an emerging
field of research on the importance of playfulness and creativity in supporting well being for older adults.
Additionally, we are interested in how a playful, inquisitive and curious approach
to digital devices can support older adults in building what we call digital living skills.
Digital living skills are the practical day to day interactions and mediations required
to understand operate, manage and curate digital technologies in the home.
And they closely tied to the concepts of digital literacy and independent living skills.
The research this paper draws from involved an interdisciplinary in-home ethnographic
and technological smart device trial, which included voice assistants, robotic vacuums,
smart kettles and smart lights.
The trial was impacted by the covid 19 pandemic which resulted in physical distancing
restrictions and stay at home orders, and that provided new challenges and also opportunities
for the project, which are discussed in our paper.
Participants were recruited through McLean care from their existing client base
in the regional New South Wales communities of Inverell, Tamworth, and Ganadah.
Each household received a unique combination of smart home technologies, based
on consultation with the project's technician who visited each household to discuss the
project, and their interests and needs, and to understand the layout of each participant home.
Devices were installed by the project technician and participants were given basic training about how to operate them.
Ongoing technical support was a key component of the whole trial.
The participants themselves were all aged between 73 and 93, with an average age of 82.
In total there were 23 households who participated in the trial involving 33 participants, and
some of them included pets. The ethnographic research involved
video recorded, in person interviews and activities in participants homes, follow up phone calls
and virtual home visits, which were adapted during the pandemic.
In order to explore participants reflections on the trial, and the devices.
The technical research relied on the smart home configuration installed into
participating households to support the operation of devices, and in the collection of usage data for the research.
The research teams work together in the collection and analysis of research
materials in accordance with participants comfort and ongoing consent.
This paper focused on participants interactions with the devices in relation
to four everyday routines: vacuuming, boiling water, light assistance, and having fun.
For these examples we demonstrate the role of curiosity, play and experimentation
in building participants digital living skills with the devices, but rather than taking you
through the findings individually, which are outlined in detail in our paper,
I want to show a short clip from our documentary film, Smart Homes for Seniors, directed by Sarah Pink.
"Hey Google, play some hip-hop music"
[Digital voice assistant] "It looks like hop-hop music is a playlist that's only available for YouTube Music Premium members.
But here's a station with similar music." [Music plays]
"The music's fantastic."
"I like the classics, I like the jazz and hip hop, swaps from one to the other, you know."
"And Helen, she loves the classics, and we put that on in the evening."
"It's just beautiful sitting there listening to classical music."
"Yeah, just sat and read a book for about three hours."
"Actually four hours just listening to the music."
"It was just so relaxing just sitting there."
"You have no cares in the world."
What we see in this short clip is the importance of experimenting with voice assistants and smart speakers to play music for fun,
and also to enhance well being as Helen described there at the end.
This was reflected more broadly by participants across the trial who engaged with music to explore new genres, to relive treasured memories,
to relax and unwind and to provide pain relief. And as Robert, the first participant shown there in the clip also demonstrated,
experimenting with playing music had also taught him workarounds to avoid paid services
and access free music on his device.
Likewise participants also experimented and played around with the voice assistance
to find out other information, or to explore the potential of this device, whilst also having fun with it.
They asked for jokes for bird noises recipes and anything else they could think of.
When the voice assistant didn't respond as expected, or when participants encountered
challenges as often happened, participants sometimes used play and humor to recount and explain their experiences.
For instance, Beryl, one of the participants joked about how her voice assistant sounded
cross when she asked for information on the weather, news and other information in the
morning, explaining that she had been 'reprimanded' by Google, when it told her
she could save time, just by saying 'good morning', so the the device could access all the information at once.
This playful orientation towards devices allowed participants to mystify technologies,
which before the trial they had felt intimidated by in a context where they felt supported
to gain confidence and make choices about how to use the devices to suit their own everyday lives.
While I've only briefly touched on a couple of the paper's findings in this talk,
I want to conclude by drawing attention to our key recommendations to support poverty positive ageing opportunities.
These are designing for impermanence and change, recognizing that older adults
are at a life stage that may make them more likely to value impermanence or adaptable
and flexible technologies and devices, as we used in this trial, which can easily be removed and changed.
Designing for fun pleasure and play to support other well being benefits like the benefits
of listening to music to support pain relief and enable older adults to connect to reconnect
to treasured memories and seeing playfulness as a mode of engagement
to learn with and about new technologies and build digital living skills.
Design and install smart home technologies to support older people’s specific usability
requirements, such as age and culturally appropriate language (for requests and responses), increased button and text size, and lighter weight.
Provide tailored and practical opportunities to build digital living skills, such as through the
scaffolded approach to learning prioritised as part of this trial, where technical learning
opportunities were embedded in particiants’ everyday routines.
And finally, provide smart home technologies for older adults as part of flexible and hybrid
crisis-ready care systems, where face to face services can rapidly be supported by smart
and other assistive technologies on a temporary basis, as was required during the covid pandemic.
In conclusion, this paper identifies the critical role of curiosity, play and experimentation
in delivering wellbeing outcomes and building older adults’ digital living skills with
smart home devices. Thank you for your attention, and we hope you enjoy reading our paper.