Professor
Arlene Astell discusses evaluation concepts with the AAL-WELL team. |
Myself (Tim
Gomersall) and Professor Arlene Astell returned this week from a successful
final meeting of the steering group for the AAL-WELL study in Vancouver,
Canada. AAL-WELL is a study about the potential for the new class of so-called
‘ambient assisted living’ (AAL) systems to support older people to maintain
everyday activities and meaningful social roles, and our group brings together
software engineers, psychologists, occupational therapists, and social
scientists to examine the issues from multiple perspectives.
In the
meeting, we discussed several key issues about AAL that have yet to be
addressed in the research literature. Our colleagues from the Karolinska
Institutet (Sweden) spoke about the activities and social roles older people
want to master in everyday life, the technologists from Toronto brought their
insights on user-centred design along, and the Vancouver-based social
scientists and modellers discussed the ethical issues around AAL. For our own
part, Professor Astell and I led a discussion about current controversies in
evaluation theories and methods for AAL. Evaluation approaches for these
technologies are in their infancy, but it is crucial to have a sound basis for
understanding their value if we are to gain the promised benefits of the AAL
revolution – and we certainly had some lively discussions on how we each
understood evaluation from our varied research perspectives!
We didn’t
just talk among ourselves while we were in Vancouver. On the fourth day of the
meeting, we led a knowledge café in which we presented our research ideas to a
residential community of older adults living just outside the city boundaries. This
was an especially valuable part of the experience – not only did we get a
chance to take some of our ideas out into the wider world, we also got some
interesting feedback on them from a community group. In fact, a lot of our
assumptions were upended by their comments – for example, it is often said that
AAL will help people to live independently, but the residents spoke about the
concerns they would have about becoming dependent on technologies, and the
problems this would cause if the technologies broke down or became unreliable.
If ever there was a clear illustration of how important it is to include the
views of older adults when considering how best to support them, this was it.
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