Demo: Helping to Tackle Social Isolation and Loneliness of Older Adults Using Mobile Applications

We live in a society with an ageing population in which the number of 65+ will significantly increase within the next 50 years. In parallel, we observe an increasing amount of technology deployed to people - both in the form of more sophisticated mobile phones as well as in the amount of technology ubiquitously integrated into the environment. With the ageing population, it will become increasingly important to accommodate the needs and requirements of older adults when designing systems and applications. We believe that mobile devices offer a unique opportunity to support older adults by, for example, providing access to citizen services to address the risks of social isolation and loneliness of older adults. Related work has been focussed on designing systems (fixed and mobile) that address the physical, cognitive and sensory needs of older adults [2, 3, 5] and on exploring HCI-related issues when designing applications for older adults (e.g. [4, 5]). We have previously conducted a series of co-creation workshops with older adults in which we determined a set of broader design considerations and requirements for developing mobile applications and systems for this demographic [1].