Enhancing quality of life: Human-centered design of mobile and smartwatch applications for assisted ambient living

Abstract

<p><strong>Background:</strong> Assisted ambient living interfaces are technologies designed to improve the quality of life for people who require assistance with daily activities. They are crucial for individuals to maintain their independence for as long as possible. To this end, these interfaces have to be user-friendly, intuitive, and accessible, even for those who are not tech-savvy. Research in recent years indicates that people find it uncomfortable to wear invasive or large intrusive devices to monitor health status, and poor user interface design implies a lack of user engagement. <strong>Methods:</strong> This paper presents the design and implementation of non-intrusive mobile and smartwatch applications for detecting older adults when executing their routines. The solution uses an intuitive mobile application to set up beacons and incorporates biometric data acquired from the smartwatch to measure bio-signals correlated to the user’s location. User testing and interface evaluation are carried out using the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). <strong>Results:</strong> Six older adults participated in the evaluation of the interfaces. Results show that users found the interaction to be excellent in all the parameters of the UEQ in the evaluation of the mobile interface. For the smartwatch application, results vary from above average to excellent. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> The applications are intuitive and easy to use, and data obtained from integrating systems is essential to link information and provide feedback to the user.</p>