Full metadata
Title
Real world strategies for user centered approach to functional assessment and design of age-in-place support for older adults
Description
As people age, the desire to grow old independently and in place becomes larger and takes greater importance in their lives. Successful aging involves the physical, mental and social well-being of an individual. To enable successful aging of older adults, it is necessary for them to perform both activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Embedded assessment has made it possible to assess an individual's functional ability in-place, however the success of any technology depends largely on the user than the technology itself. Previous researches in in-situ functional assessment systems have heavily focused on the technology rather than on the user. This dissertation takes a user-centric approach to this problem by trying to identify the design and technical challenges of deploying and using a functional assessment system in the real world.
To investigate this line of research, a case study was conducted with 4 older adults in their homes, interviews were conducted with 8 caregivers and a controlled lab experiment was conducted with 8 young healthy adults at ASU, to test the sensors. This methodology provides a significant opportunity to advance the scientific field by expanding the present focus on IADL task performance to an integrated assessment of ADL and IADL task performance. Doing so would not only be more effective in identifying functional decline but could also provide a more comprehensive assessment of individuals' functional abilities with independence and also providing the caregivers with much needed respite.
The controlled lab study tested the sensors embedded into daily objects and found them to be reliable, and efficient. Short term exploratory case studies with healthy older adults revealed the challenges associated with design and technical aspects of the current system, while inductive analysis performed on interviews with caregivers helped to generate central themes on which future functional assessment systems need to be designed and built. The key central themes were a) focus on design / user experience, b) consider user's characteristics, personality, behavior and functional ability, c) provide support for independence, and d) adapt to individual user's needs.
To investigate this line of research, a case study was conducted with 4 older adults in their homes, interviews were conducted with 8 caregivers and a controlled lab experiment was conducted with 8 young healthy adults at ASU, to test the sensors. This methodology provides a significant opportunity to advance the scientific field by expanding the present focus on IADL task performance to an integrated assessment of ADL and IADL task performance. Doing so would not only be more effective in identifying functional decline but could also provide a more comprehensive assessment of individuals' functional abilities with independence and also providing the caregivers with much needed respite.
The controlled lab study tested the sensors embedded into daily objects and found them to be reliable, and efficient. Short term exploratory case studies with healthy older adults revealed the challenges associated with design and technical aspects of the current system, while inductive analysis performed on interviews with caregivers helped to generate central themes on which future functional assessment systems need to be designed and built. The key central themes were a) focus on design / user experience, b) consider user's characteristics, personality, behavior and functional ability, c) provide support for independence, and d) adapt to individual user's needs.
Date Created
2015
Contributors
- Ravishankar, Vijay Kumar (Author)
- Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor)
- Coon, David (Committee member)
- Mahoney, Diane (Committee member)
- Walker, Erin (Committee member)
- Li, Baoxin (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
ix, 233 pages : illustrations (some color)
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.29930
Statement of Responsibility
by Vijay Kumar Ravishankar
Description Source
Viewed on July 23, 2015
Level of coding
full
Note
thesis
Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2015
bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-162)
Field of study: Computer science
System Created
- 2015-06-01 08:13:22
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:28:47
- 3 years 2 months ago
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