Tech-enhanced Life has a small group of individuals who share the tasks of creating syntheses of our explorations, and other outputs that summarize investigations in which a number of people have participated. This type of work is published under the authorship of "The Tech-enhanced Life Editorial team". We also publish a variety of content authored by specific individuals, and you can see those individual contributors profiled on our "Collaborators and Contributors" page.
An App to Make New Friends: Intergenerational Brainstorming
Ever thought “I need to make new friends: There should be an app for that“? Longevity Explorers and design students brainstormed the features they would like to see in an “App to make new friends” at an intergenerational design workshop at the 2018 Stanford Centre on Longevity Design Challenge.
For years we have been hearing older adults complain about how ugly and stigmatizing medical alerts are. As one lady told us: “My medical alert button makes me look like I escaped from the Intensive Care Unit. So I hardly ever wear it“.
A handful of medical alert watches have come to market that look like smart watches, and have some or all of the functionality of stylish smartwatches, but also work as medical alerts. We wanted to see how well they worked, and set out to test them — hoping they might change this dynamic. Here are the results, updated for 2021.
Artificial Intelligence and Robots: What Older Adults Want
While there has been lots written by academics, companies, and futurists about the potential of robots and AI in aged care, the voice of the older adult is generally absent from these discussions. Here are the opinions of the Longevity Explorers as to problems they wish a robot, smarthome, or Artifical Intelligence could solve for them.
The older adults in our explorer groups have recently become interested in a relatively new product: the Amazon Echo and its artificial intelligence Alexa. Here are their thoughts on topics like: do we want one; why would we want one; what do we use it for; and wouldn’t it be great if it could also do …”.
Learn what older adults themselves think about the challenges of medication management. Listen to discussions about the things our explorers care about; how they approach managing their medications; which products they prefer (the best pill organizers, and most successful pill reminder techniques); and what problems they face.
“Getting Around” is the first theme we are exploring in our “Useful Apps for Older Adults” initiative. Being free to get from one place to another when you want is a very important ingredient of an independent life. Here are Driving Apps, Ride-hailing Apps, and Transportation Apps that can make that easier and more convenient.
Our explorers have been trying out various gadgets that let them get in and out of cars more easily. So far we have focused on two types of products. The first is a swivel car seat, and the second is a sort of extra “car handle for the elderly”.
Below are several different older adult “personas”, we use to decide which specific medical alert device to recommend for a given older adult. These correspond to broad “types of life circumstances”, and work well for other types of products too.
Where and how we want to live as we age has been the subject of quite a few of our Longevity Explorer discussions, especially in those circles made up of Boomers. We Boomers wonder: should we move, and to which type of living situation? Listen to the audio of real people discussing these topics.
We did hands-on, comparative evaluations of mobile alerts: a specific sub-category of medical alert systems. We looked at appearance, ease of use, speed to respond when we pressed the “help” button, how well the “location capability” worked in various different locations, battery life, sound quality, price, and more. While none of the products was “perfect”, several worked rather well. But some fell short.
Our explorer circles of older adults evaluated a range of jar openers, and found big differences between them. If you need a jar opener to help open jars for whatever reason, this synthesis will tell you which ones our Longevity Explorers liked and why they liked them.
Tech-enhanced Life has a small group of individuals who share the tasks of creating syntheses of our explorations, and other outputs that summarize investigations in which a number of people have participated. This type of work is published under the authorship of “The Tech-enhanced Life Editorial team”.
We also publish a variety of content authored by specific individuals, and you can see those individual contributors profiled on our “Collaborators and Contributors” page.
Editorial Team
