Meet John. John is a 69 year old man and he is a research
participant on one of my projects. And for the past year or so John has been
using an application that I have designed to self report on his wellbeing.
So things like his sleep, his social interactions, his mood and physical activities and John
gets feedback on this in the form of graphs on his self reported wellbeing over time.
And he also gets educational advice and feedback to promote healthy behaviours.
So around Christmas time of last year John gave me a call. And he said that he had been
looking at his graphs and he noticed some changes. He said he hadn't been feeling the best
anyway, but his graphs were a little bit 'all over the place' as he put it. And he said
that reflecting on this made him realise that something wasn't quite right. So john went
to the doctor and unfortunately he was diagnosed with cancer. But when John called me he said
it was this sort of self-reporting and, you know, this feedback that he was getting that was
heightening his awareness of his wellbeing. And that gave him that push to go see his
doctor. So what I'm proposing to you today is that
effectively designed technology can support health and wellness self-management at home,
even within an older population.
So the world's population is ageing. And this
is what Ireland's population looked like in the year two thousand. As you can see it's
a nicely shaped pyramid and it shows a relatively young population. But let's have a look to
see how this graph is going to change by the year 2050.
Okay, so already by 2030 we are seeing a lot more middle aged people than younger people. And by 2050 this is increased
even more and we are going to have a lot of people who are living to be over the age
of 100. And women will still be living longer than men. So, older adults are a diverse group
and many enjoy long term good health. But to varying degrees national health and social
care systems are preparing for potentially higher incidences of chronic illnesses. so
things like diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and resulting dependency problems.
Obviously there's going to be a cost element. And changing demographics means that there's
going to be a shortage of health care workers to look after our ageing population. So as
a result, there's been an elevated interest in understanding how we might support independent
living. And it's recognised that empowering people to manage their health and wellness
at home will reduce health care costs, and improve health outcomes.
And there's a large role for innovative technology to support this monitoring of wellbeing in
the home. Early detection of problems and timely interventions to address any problems.
And this is going to help to support a shift from the current reactive model of health
care to a more proactive and preventative approach. And thankfully technology has moved
on a lot in recent year. And we don't really need to worry about hardware any more, now
we've got the complexity of interacting with technology has been reduced a lot with nice
touchscreen responsive interfaces. We do still however need to worry about software design
and interface design. Not only have smart phones and tablets become
a lot more widely accessible and available in recent years, but they are also embedded
with powerful sensors. And this has led to what's called the Quantified Self movement.
And Quantified Self applications allow you to self track or monitor your activities or
your wellness. They give you some sort of feedback.
So types of technologies that you might be familiar with include Fitbit for tracking
your activities, MyFitnessPal for tracking calorie expenditure and lots of fitness applications
map your run. However there are some problems with these
technologies, most notably that they are often designed for younger people by younger people.
So, you know, they often look at physical activities or are specific to sports. So they
don't really consider older adults as potential end-users. Even though this group of people
can potentially benefit from such application more so than younger generations.
So we don't really know much about how older adults are going to manage their wellbeing
at home. Or what might motivate them to do so.
So this is Silé, and Silé is 86 and she live alone, and a couple of years ago she
took part in a telehealth trial that we ran to monitor a heart condition and diabetes.
And she used this little piece of technology called the HealthBuddy. So during the trial
an alarm is triggered for a very high blood pressure reading, dangerously high. And thankfully
Silé's readings were being monitored by a clinical triage centre. So the higher reading
was picked up, Silé was contacted and asked to give another reading. When this also proved
to be very high the case was escalated to a consultant who had to increase Silé's anti-hypertensive
medications. So Silé had a positive experience on this trial because technology picked up
a problem. And it was , you know, caught in time. Silé probably wasn't going to her doctor
that day or that week, so who knows what might have happened. But she also enjoyed using
the technology. She said 'I thought I knew a bit about diabetes, but this has enlightened
me an awful lot, telling me different things to look for, what can cause your sugars to
go high, to go low and I thought I knew it all but I didn't. I'm learnign every day on
it.' And these are the types of responses that we are getting from pretty much all of
the older people that we work with. They are interested in managing their wellness and
it gives them a sense of empowerment. But why then haven't these technologies taken
off for this growing part of the population? Well a part of it is due to a number of myths
around older adults and technology. And these myths are widely believed by engineers, software
developers, designers, even the general public. And the first myth is that older adults are
incapable of learning technology. And this is one that I know personally to be not true.
I been teaching a group of older adults how to use iPads for the past 2 and half years.
And these are some of my students. And yes, the learning curve is a lot steeper, but none
of the older adults I've taught have had any problems really learning how to use technology.
And more so they want to learn. Another myth is that older adults are uninterested
in using technology. So there have been a number of studies conducted that examine of
older people to technology. And some report positive attitudes and some report negative
attitudes, but many of these studies are quite dated. And the purpose of technology has really
changed a lot in recent years. So now we have technologies or applications such as Skype
that can connect older adults with their families or friends across long distances. And YouTube
is another favourite amongst my students because they get to listen to all their old favourite
music and watch classical films and all for free.
The third myth is that older adult fear technology. Again this is not true, but older adult might
lack confidence in using technology. So for example my iPad students till won't update
their iPads without my support just in case something goes wrong. And they are also concerns
about, you know, privacy and staying safe online, but sure everybody has these types
of concerns nowadays. The final myth is that future generations of older
adults will have no problem with using technology because they'll be so familiar wit it. And
this myth is based on the fact that, you know, current older adults haven't had much exposure
to technology whereas younger generations are growing up with it all around them. What
this myth ignores however is that, you know, technology is constantly progressing and changing.
And the knowledge required to use technology is also going to change. You know, and, physical
impairments related to sensory loss are an obvious effect of ageing. And these impairments,
you know, they effect the visual, auditory, motor and tactical capabilities of an older
adult. And can further distance them from technology. So you know, this is going to
impact on a person's usage and interaction with technology, regardless of their prior
experience. So things like, you know, contrast are important for older adults. And guidelines
recommend having darker text on a lighter background to help improve visual acuity.
So obviously these myth can be problematic, particularly when software designers and developers
believe them to be true. So what is true? Well for older adults to
use technology there must a perceived benefit. And the technology must be usable. Training
and education is really important to improve a person's confidence, particularly when,
you know, they are at the initial stage of learning how to use something.
So what can we do as designers? Well, we can follow principles that exist out there, so
principles around universal design. We can co-design with our end-users. So these are
some participants of a project I ran last year where we had teenagers and older adults
co-designing intergenerational applications together. So that's right, older adults as
designers. They were making their voices heard and making sure that end-application that
was designed were not just useful for the teenagers, but also for the them.
We need to talk to older adults as end-users. You know, put them at the centre of what we
do and keep them involved at every stage of the design process. We need to simplify. Simplify
the language that's used and avoid jargon. Avoid using symbols and icons that might not
be easily understood or interpreted. And you know, don't have too many functions or features.
Think about what's really necessary. And we should design interfaces that look
nice. Avoid information overload and where feedback is provided in the case of wellness
applications make sure that feedback is easily understood, easily interpreted and supports
awareness. Finally we need to motivate, So you know,
the purpose of health and wellness applications is to support healthy wellbeing so people
need to be encouraged to use them long term. And you know, we can do this by keeping content
engaging and fresh and useful, but designers also need to understand theories of motivation
and theories of behaviour change. And integrate these into the designs.
So back to John. When I was evaluating his experience of the application with him, he
said 'it was good to see the graph, you know. And some days you were way down, but you'd
say to yourself after seeing it. It's time I bucked myself up here. So you'd find you
were moping about less. It was like a little prompter.'
So awareness of changes in wellbeing is key to successful ageing. And you know, it can
empower a person to alter their behaviour or to do something about the changes that
have been noticed. And I've spoken about how well designed technology can support this.
But it's important to remember that technology should only ever act as an enabler to healthy
ageing, rather than a replacement for current practice and services.
Thank you.