Design and development of interactive digital social activity space for the elderly

• Main Author: Aung, Pyae
• Other Authors: Theng Yin Leng
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50954
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Worldwide the population is ageing and the elderly today are socially isolated. Social participation in social activities and social engagement with friends play vital role in a person's old life to promote their social lifestyle and well-being. However, the elderly today are getting socially isolated and as a result, they suffer from physical and mental illness (e.g. loneliness). This study is about using technologies to encourage social activities of the elderly and positive living. We propose the design of a digital social activity space for the elderly. Using focus group study, we conducted a study to collect inputs with six elderly users and administrators. The main objective of digital social activity space was to fmd out whether a digital social activity game could impact on the affective responses of the elderly people. The ideas about Interactive Digital Social Activity Space (IDSAS) were explored with the elderly and the social activity games were designed and developed based on the findings from the focus group study with the elderly participants and the administrator of senior center. Initial evaluation of the prototype with 17 elderly participants was conducted at the TOUCH Senior Activity Center in Singapore. Findings show that IDSAS brought about positive emotional responses of the elderly and the elderly participants enjoyed playing with IDSAS prototype. The statistics showed that the affective responses of the elderly participants were slightly higher after they had played the social activity games. Moreover, the elderly participants mentioned in the general interview session that they would like to play digital social activity games in the future and they would like to play more interactive social games for them. This study suggests that the digital social activity games could positively affect on the elderly users and the game designers should create more interactive social games for the elderly to promote their social lifestyles.