Abstract
Current communication practices broadly rely on social media services and instant messaging. However, in the context of intergenerational interaction, this paradigm has not been deeply studied from a holistic perspective, i.e., considering the attitudes, expectations, viewpoints, and concerns of all involved stakeholders. Therefore, there is still a broad amount of open research questions in exploring the potential and implications of designing, developing, and deploying computer-supported solutions in this domain. In this paper, we aim to model---in a comprehensive manner---the structure and dynamics of informal elderly caregiving and intergenerational communication, as a way to understand their socio-technical nuances as a way to support the design of novel computer-supported mechanisms to mediate these processes. More precisely, this implies identifying key design aspects, considering the perspective raised by older adults and how other family members articulate themselves in this context. By addressing the proposed design guidelines, social computing researchers, designers, and practitioners would be able to better understand the complexity of informal elderly caregiving, and identify plausible solutions that would improve user experience and the effectiveness of computer-supported mediation strategies.
Highlights
As a person gets older, the size of his/her social networks, sense of social connection, and interaction frequency all tend to decrease [1, 2], focusing more on close family members—mainly children and grandchildren
By studying the generated log files reporting the interaction activity with the SocialConnector system, as well as contrasting the results of the entry and exit questionnaires applied to older adults, we aim to study the validity of the following hypotheses: (H1) The system contributes to improve social engagement of older adults. (H2) The system encourages a sustainable increase in the frequency of social interaction exchanges from/to the family older adults, which can be further specified as: (H2a) The social awareness mediation increases the frequency of exchanges with older adults; and (H2b) After removing the mediation prompts, such frequency of exchanges does not decrease
In order to have an overview of how the usage of the SocialConnector system impacted on mediating the communication between older adults and their family members, we initially compared the scores of the questionnaire and the main metrics of system usage, aggregating the collected data for all participants in the study sample
Summary
As a person gets older, the size of his/her social networks, sense of social connection, and interaction frequency all tend to decrease [1, 2], focusing more on close family members—mainly children and grandchildren This perceived reduction in the number of social exchanges negatively impacts the physical and mental health of older adults, and their wellbeing. Literature recognizes this situation as the assumption of a filial obligation, which is deeply rooted in Latin America In some cases, it is further considered as a societal expectation [5] in which family members are prompted to promote social engagement and provide affective care to their older adults [5]. A large number of Latin American older adults still prefer to stick to this interaction paradigm [6] This shapes the way in which family exchanges should be supported, reinforced, or mediated. Given that SocialConnector runs on a Tablet PC, it uses the embedded sensors in the hardware to assist in monitoring the activities of the older adult in a non-invasive way
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