Keywords

1 Introduction

State-of-art technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) is highly expected to contribute in making elderly’s quality of life better. One of the advantages of utilizing IoT technology is that it can be customized easily according to user’s preference. In IoT technology, inputs and outputs are connected via the Internet, and since they are inherently independent from each other, adjustment of their functions can be easily done. By connecting various things in the house to the internet, users can solve their own problem such as achieving the status information, receiving alert of dangers, controlling motors in furniture, classifying life patterns by accumulated data, and so on. Also, the concept of connecting everything to the internet has a high expectation of medical support for home clinical care setting which requires care and warning to patient’s daily life. Thus, users can change and utilize the functions of IoT technology in a manner suited to their own lifestyle.

Elderly people have their own requirements for their own life style which might be different with imagination from assistant device developer. Age-related functional decline is a gradual loss of physical and psychological ability which occurs with changes in the human body in every moment from the 20 s until the end [1]. Changes in physical ability such as the sensorimotor system can cause risk of falls or accidents and it might bring limitation in independent lifestyle [1,2,3]. Not threatening, but gradual macular degenerations, loss of hearing, weakness in bones, memory problems and brain problems will also bring changes in lifestyle. At the point of specific levels of decline in ability, elderly’s will stop driving, unable to read a book, less cooking recipe, quitting outdoor sports and less challenges toward new experience. These kind of various problems might not be enough to maintain their quality of life by using current assistant devices. In the other hand, IoT devices which can be easily changed and utilized for user can effectively solve the elderly’s needs.

IoT technology has not prevailed much in the lives of elderly people. In Japan, where the population aging is progressing, technology is expected to support home life of elderly people. Under these circumstances, IoT technology, which is easy to customize according to individuals, can play an effective role in the lives of elderly people whose physical and psychological conditions have large differences among individuals. Therefore, elucidation of the barriers in introducing IoT technologies into the daily lives of elderly people is an important subject.

One hypothesis of the reasons why the IoT technologies do not prevail in the elderly people is that the elderly people may not be able to imagine the living scene using IoT technology by themselves. In other words, whether they can envision use case of IoT technology may be an important aspect for the friendliness of elderly people with such technology. If so, it will be indispensable for the introduction of IoT technology not only to improve the functional convenience of the technology, but also to promote elderly people’s understanding of the technology.

The purpose of our study is to introduce IoT to elderly people using carefully designed age-friendly workshop and to verify that helping elderly people to imagine they use IoT in their livings, can encourage elderly people to bring out solutions for their own specific problems. In the workshop, we asked the elderly people’s ideas to make better their lives by using IoT technology and measured how much they are friendly and having confidence with the IoT technology by questionnaire. By considering the result of this survey, this study explored guidelines for introducing IoT technology to the lives of elderly people.

2 Related Works

This chapter reviews previous researches related to this study. First, we review how the workshop is acceptable for IoT experience. Then, we review how the workshop is acceptable for encouragement for elderly people to generate as many ideas as possible in a short time. These studies focus on the usefulness and impact of card-based workshop to encourage elderly people to think about more convenient life by using and trying, feeling IoT possibility.

2.1 Workshop for IoT Experience

Research projects found that workshops which install card-based tools are effective to support idea generation [4]. Cards are a good tool for experiencing a difficult concept because it makes people enjoyable and let the people at the center of the process [5, 6].

It is effective not only for logical thinking, but also for facilitating creative thinking. When a participant’s idea gets unproductive, using cards can lead to discussing actively and generating diverse ideas [7]. It has been introduced to the design of IoT related technology such as interfaces, influencing behaviors and design for games [8,9,10]. From these previous researches, the card-based workshop is acceptable for IoT experience. So, we use card-based workshop for IoT experience and led people to generate ideas in a new way for IoT.

2.2 Workshop for Encouraging Elderly to Generate Ideas by Themselves

It is difficult for not only elderly people but also young people or even children to generate new ideas in a short period. For developing new technology for elderly people, many companies or researchers tried various methods such as interview, workshop and observation of their lifestyle in order to prevent mismatches of needs between caregivers and developers, extract new ideas, find potential needs and evaluate acceptance [11,12,13].

When we talk with elderly people, they probably shared their life experience, memory, and events. Even though dementia, it is known that they remembered past events or special story like their childhood story. Remembering and sharing it with another person is meaningful (Ricoeur’s words 1999, Jelin 2001). This meaning action does not occur only by themselves, but need groups and social networks.

The workshop that provides the place where elderly people can talk or recall their life stories and share with other people give benefit to the elderly people, because it is a good opportunity for them to experience new thing and develop social skills by discussing with the group members. During the workshop, it was found that workshop constitutes a tool of access to the subjective experience of elderly people and storytelling gives new meaning to their life trajectory. So, the workshop is a good way to encourage them to think of their lifestyle and discuss about what is their problems or worries in their life or what kind of technology will need or can be installed in order to have an enjoyable time at home.

3 Methods

3.1 Overview and Subject Attributes

In order to have the elderly people themselves discover ideas for utilizing IoT based on their own specific needs, “Workshop on Information Utilization in Life” targeting over 65 years old was held (Fig. 1). We constructed the WS based on the ideas of card-based design tools [14, 15]. We look at IoT from a “things-oriented” [16] perspective. Since the basic operation of the tablet PC is necessary in this WS, the ones who owns a tablet PC or a smartphone were elected. The workshop was held in two different places and we named each group as group A and group B. Activity for group A was held in an activity center which is called Fuseshinmachi Furusato Center in Fuseshinmachi, Kashiwa, Chiba prefecture, Japan. And activity for group B was held in University of Tokyo in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

Fig. 1.
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Elderly people trying to use IoT devices in the designed workshop

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3.2 Flow of WS

We implemented WS as shown in Fig. 2. First, we briefed about IoT and demonstrated IoT equipment for about 10 min. This explanation is not intended for the participants to acquire general knowledge about IoT, but intended to improve their confidence in understanding with helping to establish an image to IoT. The definition and explanation of IoT has been prepared with reference to ICT skills comprehensive learning materials [17] by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

Fig. 2.
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Flowchart of the workshop

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Next, the subject experienced IoT equipment. As IoT equipment, we have prepared devices, which have functions of communication and sensing, and devices which have functions of communication and feedback. Specifically, a tablet PC (iPad, Apple), a set of IoT blocks (MESH, SONY), a smart light bulb (KL110, TP-Link) has been prepared and each function can be connected by visual programming (MESH, SONY) (Fig. 3). We used the web service for connecting APIs (IFTTT) to easily realize IoT system, but the participants never touched this web service not to be confused.

Fig. 3.
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Used IoT devices

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The experiential program is divided into two parts, a fixed experience according to the manual and a free experience by the subjects. In the first part, they experienced the method of visual programming that connects Trigger which is expressed as a conditional clause and Feedback which is expressed as a main clause with two programming examples. Then they checked the operation of two examples by the IoT blocks and they have experienced the connection between the visual programming and the real operation. In the second part, the subjects freely experienced a combination of the sensor devices and the feedback devices under the support of staffs for about 10 min, while using prepared cards expressing functions of the sensor and feedback devices. This set of cards is the same as that used in the third program, the card-based ideation. The card set will be described in detail in the following paragraphs. In these experiences, we emphasized that the connection between visual programming and its implementation result is intuitive for the subjects, and we kept in mind that the implementation result could be confirmed by the subjects immediately.

The third part is the card-based ideation by senior subjects. As it is difficult for non-expert senior to understand the engineering functions of sensors and others and make them available in a limited time, we prepared the set of cards in two categories of Trigger and Feedback category with words and pictures abstractly showing examples of utilization of equipments prepared for this workshop (Fig. 4). Words written on the card were unified into descriptions having one or less subject and one predicate when written in Japanese and the expression of words and pictures didn’t limit the place of use with the notation.

Fig. 4.
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Example of cards used in the workshop. Left is trigger card and right is feedback card.

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The card-based ideation consisted of two parts, that was devising ideas and sharing them in groups and deciding one idea that the group wanted to use most. Devising ideas and sharing took place in about 20 min. We informed participants that the participants themselves should devise the ideas that make their lives more convenient, or more pleasant. For these objectives, they thought the idea consisting from a combination of trigger and feedback, where they wanted to use and how they wanted to use. During devising and sharing ideas, the staff made remarks to hear the detailed content of the idea. When the elderly people need help, the staffs advised for improvement of the ideas, but the idea was conceived and formed by the elderly people themselves. In order to get ideas closely related to living, the position of physical trigger and physical feedback operation is limited to within the home premises, and the non-physical trigger and feedback cards are stamped for distinction. For ideas that came out about functions not provided as cards, we recorded in post it.

As the final part of idea delivery, the participants themselves determined one idea to prototype in the group based on the degree of hope of using at home. In order to share their ideas of all groups with participants, elderly people created prototypes of the ideas that were decided according to the production recipe described on the back of the card with some helps by staff. The role-play type prototype using IoT equipment was examined for over 15 min. Then, WS activity was closed with presentations of ideas by role-play (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
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Idea delivery part in workshops

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3.3 Senior-Friendly Design of the WS Cards

Cards are devised to make it easy for elderly people to understand and utilize. The cards are sized as large as 148 × 105 mm and the main letters are sized more than 8 mm (Fig. 6). The letter size is large enough for seniors under the ordinal room light [18]. Because elderly people do not memorize the contents of the all cards, we simplified the card type so that they expanded all kinds of cards on the table to look every card. The contents of Trigger card and Feedback card are summarized in Table 1. With reference to some designs [14, 15], Trigger category and Feedback category are color-coded to be discernible from each other. On the backside of the card, to help to write a program for implementation of the idea, the screenshot of the visual programming shows what sensor can be used and how to set up [15].

Fig. 6.
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Design of cards for elderly people

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Table 1. Contents of trigger cards and feedback cards
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3.4 Evaluation Process

The WS aimed at the senior-friendly introduction of IoT and the excavation of the unconscious individual IoT needs of elderly individuals, so WS was evaluated at these two points. In order to evaluate confidence in understanding, questionnaires with a five point Likert scale are conducted before the workshop and after the workshop. In addition, in order to evaluate the acceptability for seniors of a series of systems used in the workshop, a questionnaire on SUS [18] was done after the workshop.

In order to evaluate the excavation of the unconscious individual IoT needs of elderly individuals, we compared the free answer of “Recent Trouble” by a prior questionnaire with the idea that resulted from WS. Video data and audio data were recorded for every two groups, and the contents of listening to ideas at WS were used for concrete representation of ideas that resulted from WS.

3.5 Statistical Analysis

Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was calculated for showing the relationship between the individual’s number of idea and friendliness to IoT. To compare between before and after questionnaire score, Mann-Whitney U test was used. Mann-Whitney U test was also used for comparing between groups’ characteristics using before survey to confirm there is no big difference between 3 different workshops. These calculations were done by statistic program R-3.5.2.

4 Result

4.1 Participant Characteristics

In the two times of the workshop, total 22 elderly people participated to experience using IoT in their real life. Participants’ characteristics were obtained as Table 2 during survey time. Our research team recruited those who understand drag and drop of the touch panel. Thus, except one participant, 21 participants were using smartphone with understanding their house internet environment. And also for preventing result from reflecting gender characteristic, 10 female participants and 12 male participants were chosen. Most of the participants were living with their partner or children while only two participants lived alone.

Table 2. Characteristics of the participants
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4.2 Before Workshop

Participants also provided pilot survey of 4 different questions. Group A was asked about what kind of troubles exist in their current life. We collected these data for knowing how much participants are friendly toward IoT or new technology. Participants showed various answers to whether they are used to the word IoT (median: 3, IQR: 2-4). But most of the participants thought, internet can help their trouble in life (median 4, IQR 4-4). Also, various people came to experience about IoT, those who felt different trouble level with diverse reasons in their lifestyle (median 3, IQR 2-4). Figure 7 shows how much they are active toward experiencing new technology. In group A 29% of the participants shown the most expectation for this workshop while 64% shown interest and left 7% shown difficulty. On the other hand, group B was mostly showing their interest (75%), and some of them shown difficulty (25%) before they join this workshop. Group B was significantly younger compare to group A.

Fig. 7.
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Each group’s activeness of the participants

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4.3 Idea from Workshop

In these two workshops, 22 participants suggested 134 ideas, including 15 ideas which were the external idea from workshops’ card based idea. Each group’s number of ideas are shown in Table 3. Group A expressed 94 ideas which is 6.71 ideas per one person. And group B expressed 40 ideas with 5 ideas per one person.

Table 3. Number of idea from each group
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After the workshop ended, participants provided their feeling toward IoT using surveys. Table 4 shows the result of after survey. The median score of questionnaire about how much they enjoyed was 5 (IQR, 4.75-5) showing that they greatly agreed. And in other questions scored 4 showing that they agreed. Only, 13 participants joined in SUS test, and the average score was 54.62 (SD, 13). Most of the participants have shown positive score for thinking and try making prototype IoT devices (Fig. 8).

Table 4. Scores of after workshop survey to confirm their friendly and acceptability
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Fig. 8.
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Elderly people thinking about what can be help for their lives

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Most of the participants gave high score on their understanding level. As, this question is about asking their confidence level, we compared with question about whether they are used to IoT. There was a significant difference in participant’s confidence between before and after (p < 0.05, Fig. 9). Rather than explaining the whole system of IoT, just making them understand what is obtaining information and what can be feedback, lead elderly people to try to make or design by themselves. Degraded but friendly explanations could have made participants obtain more confidence in IoT devices.

Fig. 9.
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Confidence in using IoT

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5 Discussion

Age-friendly designed workshop introduced IoT to elderly people by experiencing various IoT devices and imaging the usage in their own life. Participants expressed 119 ideas based on card combination and among those ideas 12 best ideas were selected based on elderly people’s consensus. Most of the participants replied positively about IoT devices after the workshop, compared to participants shown various feelings toward experiencing new technology before the workshop. Encouraging elderly people to imagine how to solve problems from their own problems using IoT technologies, might bring them better achievement and bigger consensus with others.

In previous research, finding elderly’s difficulty and solving with house monitoring technology was done, by trying to make elderly people imagine their normal life to figure out their needs [19]. This approach might discover common needs that can basically occur in various elderly people as the researcher were focusing on ideas that came out frequently, but not individual specific needs. Using and customizing IoT might help finding elderly’s individual specific needs. As IoT is not easy to be used by elderly, our research group tried to introduce the IoT technology to elderly people, to build their own smart house with their own requirement, expecting elderly people to become friendly with IoT technology.

A number of ideas were considered as how well participants can imagine about where to use this new experienced technology. And friendly score was measured by asking how much they enjoyed using IoT devices. By using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, we confirmed there is significant correlation between knowledge of where to use and friendly toward IoT (ρ = 0.44, p < 0.05, Fig. 10). Though it is hard to say there is a causal relationship, verification of importance in imagination toward usage was done in this study.

Fig. 10.
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Correlation with friendly and number of ideas

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Many different kinds of ideas might indicate that the workshop was effective enough to support idea generation. Thus, what kind of problems does elderly people imagine before the workshop was achieved by the survey. And for the imagination of during the workshop was collected by card based ideas. In the survey, participants were asked before the workshop is started, about their troubles they can easily think about (Table 5). Four participants wanted to solve their memory problem and three participants shown difficulty in driving and multitasking. These result show that most of the troubles came from age-related functional decline which might have changed their life style [2, 3].

Table 5. Troubles that participants had before workshop
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To show what kind of imaginations came out from the workshop, our research team categorized ideas into each objective that elderly people wanted to detect by sensor and what they wanted to do with that information. Categorize was based on the purpose of used card by elderly people. For example, sensing the pushed button is basically detecting thing, but if it was for detecting interphone pressed by someone, we classified as, detecting living thing. For another example, we classified turning on the light as changing status if the purpose was to make a brighter place, and if the purpose was to notice someone, we classified as informing. Figure 11 shows the number of the categorized idea. Most of the participants were having needs about detecting environment changes. They were greatly interested at dangers that they might couldn’t feel, or maintaining daily cycle as they don’t have any works. Also, they wanted to get the information or send the information, rather than changing or recording automatically. It seems that elderly people prefer to get informed and solve by themselves, which is comparable with young people who wants everything done automatically. Moreover, feedback of inform was greatly important for elderly people to alert the sudden danger to neighbors and family.

Fig. 11.
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Numbers of each categorized idea.

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Previous studies found that card-based workshop is effective for supporting idea generation [4]. Nine categorized 119 ideas from this workshop also indicate that the card based workshop was effective enough to bring out elderly people’s idea generation. This study was done with elderly people who know how to use tablet PC or smartphone. The reason was we failed to explain well toward elderly people who don’t even have a smartphone. And this kind of difficulty brought many additional efforts until now to develop new technologies for elderly people [11,12,13]. In this study, we suggest card based workshop to help elderly people to be able to solve their problem by imaging where they can use IoT devices.

Our research group expected, we could find elderly people’s specific own needs by asking the thinking pathway of came out idea. However, obtaining such kind of data with consistency was greatly difficult. Also, comparing before with after wasn’t clearly done as activity time was only one and a half hour. If we can have held this kind of activity in same area periodically, we might could be successful to do before and after comparison and also obtain how they are experiencing and using.

6 Conclusion

In this study, we verified that the knowledge of where to use with connecting to their own specific needs will bring elderly people friendly with IoT devices. Carefully designed cards and example ideas helped participants bring out more ideas and higher confidence. We are suggesting that future age-friendly IoT device can be more intuitive by using a degrading concept of IoT using card activity.