An integrated approach to supporting interaction evolution in home care systems

Abstract

There are many sources of change within the domain of home care. People have changing needs, beliefs, and preferences regarding their care plan and how they might want to interact with existing and emerging home care technologies. The devices and services available to the user are likely to change over time depending on a person's capabilities or location within the home and the current devices and services available. The resulting interaction methods can therefore also change in accordance with the room location, available devices or displays, or preferred modalities. Home care systems therefore need to offer configuration possibilities that support this change. Computer systems offer methods and tools to support configuration in the short term, but do not provide mechanisms for supporting configuration over both short and long term. This paper presents an approach that addresses this issue in the home care domain by integrating methods for interaction requirements engineering with system support for turning those requirements into a working configuration. Both the methods and system support are designed to address a gradual process of change -- 'interaction evolution' in home care. We present the key features of our approach using a home care scenario and consider our progress to date in implementing and validating the approach.