The Sense Lounger: Establishing an Ubicomp Beachhead in Elders’ Homes.

Amy Hurst, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Chris Atkeson, Francine Gemperle, Carl

DiSalvo, Michel Peeters, Nassim Jafarin, Ron Kemnitzer {}

ABSTRACT In this paper we describe the Sense Lounger, a prototype that simply and cheaply turns a lounge chair into an initial “ubicomp” device in a home; providing a beachhead for transforming the home into a rich ubicomp environment. The Sense Lounger employs fabric sensors sewn into a chair’s slipcover and force sensors on each leg in order to detect both an occupant and their activity. Taking a user-centered design approach, we explored the needs and opportunities for instrumenting the homes of elders in order to help them age in place. Drawing insights from user needs, we developed the Sense Lounger to (i) fit into the home and lifestyle of elders, (ii) assist and add value to the lives of elders, (iii) provide a platform for expanding assistive devices within the home environment.

Keywords Interaction design, design studies, assistive technology, eldercare, aging in place, ubicomp ACM Classification H.5.m Information interfaces and presentation (e.g. HCI)

INTRODUCTION For many years researchers have explored the promise of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) technology in the home; however, both users and product development companies have been reluctant to bring these developments into their homes. Resistance comes from privacy concerns, cost, aesthetics, ease of use, and the inconvenience of heavily instrumenting the entire home environment. Additionally, people will continue to resist using ubiquitous computing technology in their home until they can see that the benefits easily outweigh their concerns. Elders provide one of the most interesting demographics with respect to ubiquitous computing technology because they are an audience that can clearly benefit from the technology. As elders age, they frequently spend more and more time in their homes and often require assistance to keep up with the tasks of daily living. They can get some assistance from family, friends, and health care works, but

technology may also be able to play a positive role in their lives. Acceptance of ubiquitous computing devices and environments offer the elders an opportunity to stay in their homes longer. As elders require more assistance, they frequently move to environments with higher levels of care, such as assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Elders in these facilities may be an ideal population to take early advantage of ubiquitous computing technology because (i) the environments are both smaller and more controlled living environments, usually one or two bedroom apartments and have similar layouts, which are easy to equip with technology, and (ii) the facility can directly benefit from the technology to both reduce staff intervention and to provide more granular information to care providers. Elders are also an important population for ubiquitous technology researchers because of their increasing numbers. The US Census Department has predicted [17] that the elderly population in the United States (65 and older) will double from 34 to 68 million by the year 2028. In order to have well designed assistive technology by then we must begin placing technology in homes now. While the elder demographic offers a great opportunity, they also provide some significant challenges through their resistance to bring technology into their homes. They do not want to spend their time learning complicated interfaces; they do not want their homes to look like maximum-security prisons; and they do not want to surrender control of their lives to machines. One of the main barriers to acceptance of whole-house ubicomp systems is that they are complicated, invasive, expensive, and generally aesthetically unpleasant. Many people have a strong resistance to accepting cameras in their homes, due to privacy issues. Other people will not purchase, install, or even allow the large number of devices and technologies that make room level systems work. Room-based technology can also appear to be “too smart” and autonomous for an audience that is already ceding control of their lives to family members and healthcare workers. However, technology that comes into the home through their much loved and frequently used chair may provide the best opportunity for convincing elders of the benefits of larger ubicomp systems.

Figure 1. The Sense Lounger (left)

exposed view of Sense Lounger’s sensors (right) RELATED WORK There are many social issues related to ubiquitous computing [1] such as privacy, control, visibility and security, which can affect its acceptance into the home. Social attributes and cultural judgments can also influence elder’s willingness to accept assistive devices [5]. We have designed the Sense Lounger with these factors in mind, in order to achieve a technology that will be realistically accepted. Whole-home ubiquitous computing projects are those where a home is built from the ground up or an existing home is modified and filled with technology to make it a living laboratory. There are several ongoing research projects [9,10,14] and industry related ones [8] that are building whole-home ubiquitous computing technologies. These homes are equipped with multi-camera vision systems, and large sensor networks. The combination of these technologies enables the “house” to track individuals and record their activities. However these whole-house systems require a lot of infrastructure and are very expensive. These whole-home systems involve the acceptance of a lot of technology into one’s home and can be intimidating to people unfamiliar with technology. There have been other projects which have smaller footprints which we feel are more acceptable for the home, such as The Digital Family Portrait [15]. This is a remote display of an elder’s activity in the home over time, and is designed for people not in the home. This display is generic and adaptable so it can be used with a variety of sensors in the home. We see our Sense Lounger as one potential input device for this or related activity communication systems. MIT’s media lab has developed a Sensing Chair, [19] which uses two very expensive pressure sensor sheets manufactured by TekScan Inc. These pressure sheets are placed on the seat and back of an Aeron office chair and measure the amount of pressure applied to each part of the chair. They have developed software that is able to determine the posture of the chair’s occupant, and use this as real time input to a computer system. Fay et al [3] have

developed a Smart Couch which is able to recognize the occupants sitting on it, by using load cells to detect the weight of the couch’s occupants. Our approach differs from theirs in two distinct ways. First, we focus on maximizing the value of inexpensive sensors, and second, we do not require users to replace a chair that may have high sentimental value. Through our research we have found that replacing their chair is not an acceptable solution for most of the elderly demographic. Beaudin et al [2] explored ubiquitous sensors for data collection using a variety of sensors including ones worn by the home’s occupant and others which were located on objects in the home. In this work they recommend that “sensors be place wherever possible without regard to estimated use frequency” and they also recommend that the “visibility of the sensors be minimized” (Beaudin, 1360) Since elders currently perform so many activities in their chair, we feel that by only instrumenting it, we will be able to get enough data and application value to gain entry into the home.

While most of these related works have taken a technology approach first, our work benefits from combining the methodologies of design and technology research. We have also adopted the research goal of making ubiquitous technology that conforms to Raymond Lowey’s MAYA design philosophy of developing products that are the “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable” [12]. This can be tricky to achieve when designing for any audience, and especially elders because they frequently have barriers to the acceptance of technology. Throughout this paper we will discuss these barriers that we have discovered and how we have designed our technology to overcome them. NEEDS ASSESSMENT Elders can be a difficult demographic to design for because they are frequently resistant to accepting new products or technology unless they feel it helps them enough. Our first step was to learn the needs of the elders that we were designing for, so we could address them with technology. Our early work was inspired by an ethnographic study of 17 elders living independently in their homes [4]. This work focused on the private home as the context, and looked specifically at how problems with products and the environment provided signs of decline and a need for assistance. Based on the analysis of the ethnographic data, we next identified 53 opportunities for new technologies to assist the aging population. We grouped these into five main opportunity areas, which included leaving a legacy, controlling the environment, health and wellness, social and emotional communication, and chairside and bedside. Interviews In order to learn more about elders’ relationships with their chairs, we went to an assisted living facility in suburban Pittsburgh and interviewed 7 elders (4 women and 3 men) about their chairs. We interviewed them about the furniture in their home, and where they spend the most time in their

home. We were also interested in seeing if they had a dominant chair that they spent the majority of their time in, and what they did in that chair. We used the directed storytelling approach to learn what they do in their chair by asking them “How did you use your chair yesterday?” The audio for these interviews were recorded and later transcribed, and we photographed their chair and them in their chair. We analyzed our data by listening to the audio recordings and analyzing the images and coding these for similarities and trends. We focused on elders living in assisted living facilities because (i) they have moved from their home and are able to reflect on their lives before and after the transition, and (ii) their move indicates their awareness of the need for some assistance. Generally, as elders move to more assisted living facilities, they are also moving into smaller living spaces. As a result, they must reduce their furniture and belongings when they move to these facilities, so they usually only bring furniture that is particularly meaningful or useful. The elders we interviewed had moved from particularly large homes (three or four bedrooms) to one or two bedroom apartments, and had all had to reduce their amount of furniture by a great deal. Elders in assisted living facilities are also getting the level of care that we want to be able to provide with technology to elders at home. This is a reason why learning about their needs can help us understand what needs people at home might have. We saw several themes while analyzing these interviews, but here we will focus on the two most dominant ones: the attachment these elders had to their chair, and how they used this chair as a “command center”. Chair Attachment During these interviews we saw people with many different kinds of chairs and sofas. The most common type of chair was a heavily padded recliner. A few people didn’t have a chair that they spent their time in, but had one particular spot on the sofa. The elders we talked to had many different reasons for choosing their chair. Some of them had doctors who had recommended specific types of chairs, such as one that allowed them to put their feet up. One interviewee mentioned that she is just more comfortable in her chair than she is in most others. She says this is because the chair “fits her.” Some elders also mentioned that there were certain chair designs that they simply could not sit in, because they wouldn’t be able to get out of. These were usually overstuffed chairs. While conducting these interviews we saw that many elders had a very strong attachment to their chair. This attachment was strong for many reasons. One of these is that some of the elders we talked to were very chair-bound and spend most of their day in the chair, so they had spent a lot of time thinking about what chair is right for them. Another major reason for this strong attachment to the chair is that they had been using the same chair for many years.

Figure 2. Chair as command center, representative chair and objects that surround it.

Additionally, we talked to people who had a sentimental attachment to the chair because it had been passed down in their family for a long time. We also observed that as elders’ requirements for a chair changed as they aged, they would keep their existing chair instead of buying a new one. We saw several cases where people had augmented their chair with a headrest or an additional cushion underneath, to make it more comfortable. Chair as Command Center We saw that these chairs were frequently used as a ”command center”, which describes how the chair is surrounded by the artifacts that the elder will need throughout the day. This notion of the chair as a command center is especially important to elders who have mobility problems. Figure 2 is a representative example of the objects that we saw surrounding the chair. In this example, the elder has configured their chair so it has a nearby table with a lamp, remote control for a television and a small basket full of pencils. Behind the chair on the kitchen ledge is a phone and an address book with a scheduler. The basket on the right of the chair contains crafting supplies and the basket on the left has reading materials. The people we interviewed had a large variety of activities they performed in their chair. Some of the more common activities were reading, watching television, relaxing, socializing and crafting. We also interviewed people who ate meals and napped in their chairs. Some of the people we talked to also mentioned sometimes sitting too long in their chairs and getting stiff joints. We want to build from this existing notion of the chair being the place the user spends their time and performs activities, by building technology that supports their current activities as well as enabling them to do new ones. However, the technology must also take into account how

long the user has been sitting there and make sure they don’t become too sedentary. Needs Based on our interviews with elders, we developed a list of their daily needs that we felt we could support with technology in a chair. General Needs • Autonomy. Since the elders we interviewed lived in

assisted living facilities, they were very concerned about remaining as independent as possible.

• Safety. The home can be a dangerous place for elders, especially with respect to falls. They can be at a high risk for a fall if they are not careful when getting in or out of their chair.

• Exercise. These elders knew that they needed to stay active and shouldn’t rely on technology to take over physical or cognitive tasks they could still perform. We saw this need reinforced with their opinion of lift chairs. They were very opposed to getting chairs that lifted them out because they wanted to keep exercising their knees. While none of the elders we interviewed used the facilities gym, several of them would go on walks around the facility for exercise.

Technology Needs • Keeping a Schedule. Keeping on schedule is very

important for the elders we interviewed because they had many things to keep track of. These included social activities, doctor appointments, and remembering to take medication. The elders we interviewed kept a calendar next to their chair and would write activities in it. A few of them would also have a pocket timer which they would set in order to remind them of certain things, such as remembering to get the clothes out of the washing machine.

• Entertainment and Education. One of the main activities of elders in their chair was entertainment, the two most common forms being reading and television. They also had a strong interest in entertainment that furthered their education. Many of them watched the news daily and read the daily newspaper in order to know about local and world events. They also watched educational programs such as documentaries and history programs.

• Communication. The elders mostly communicated with their family members and members of their community on the telephone. They admitted to letting the answering machine answer the phone if they were far from the chair or performing another activity. They all had access to computers and free computer classes in the facility, and a few of them had computers in their apartments, but they didn’t send a lot of email. The most common reason for not using computers more was that they didn’t have the time to learn how to use them.

Figure 3. Example of concept shown to focus group Focus Group In order to validate that our observation of these needs matched the elder’s perceptions of their needs, we conducted a focus group session with six different elders living in a similar assisted living facility. We generated a set of twenty-two concepts that communicated scenarios where these needs both were and were not met. The scenarios focused on the interaction between the user and the chair and not the specific technology. During the focus group we gave each participant an 11x17 sized sheet of paper with one concept on it, and read the text for them. After reading the concepts’ text we asked them if they had ever had similar experiences. Concepts addressed needs such as communication, entertainment, capturing family history and exercise. Figure 3 provides an example of a concept that we showed that enables people to find out who is available to socialize right now. This concept was based on the need we saw of the elders in the assisted living facilities not knowing if their friends were available to socialize, or if they were busy or asleep. Barriers to Acceptance of Technology In addition to validating our list of elder’s needs, this focus group helped us learn what barriers we would have to face in order for this demographic to accept technology into their homes. One of these barriers was a general uneasiness about allowing technology into the home, and being concerned that the technology would be “too smart.” This concern stemmed from the uneasiness they had towards autonomous technology which they weren’t able to control and didn’t know what kind of data it was collecting or who would be able to see that data. Other elders discussed the problem of becoming too dependent on assistive technology. They cited friends they had known who had gotten walking aids such as scooters and power chairs, when they could still walk. They felt these friends had quickly become so reliant on these assistive devices that they had lost their ability to walk. There was a general resistance to technology that took control away from them. The elders in our focus group explained that they wanted to remain active in controlling their environment and wanted to keep “exercising the brain”. They felt that technology that was too automated would lead to a cognitive decline, a real fear given the increasing number of elders with dementia. This finding is

inline with the research of Rodin, J. et al. [16] where they found that not providing people a sense of control over technology could be both psychologically and physically debilitating.

DESIGN IMPLICATIONS This design research had a tremendous affect on the technological design of the Sense Lounger. Perhaps the most significant finding was that we would not be able to replace the elders’ existing chair with a new technological one. This is due to the strong relationship they have with their chair, the amount of money that they would have to spend on new technology, and their acceptance of new technology in the home. However, this research showed us that we could augment their chair with technology, so long as it meet some requirements. Three of these most important requirements are that this technology be simple, robust and comfortable. Another important finding is that many of the applications that meet the user’s needs require the Sense Lounger to be context aware. We feel that the least invasive way to do this is to train the Sense Lounger to recognize user’s current activity: reading, napping, socializing, etc., and react in an appropriate way. For example, in the scenario given in Figure 3, the Sense Lounger needs to know what it means to be available. One possible way the sense lounger could determine if someone were available would be to sense that they were alone in their home and awake in their chair. In this section we explain the sensing opportunities that we see for the Sense Lounger, requirements for the sensors, and discuss potential applications. Sensing Opportunities Throughout the technology design stage of this work, we have been striving for design technology that is focused on the needs of elders. However, we also designed it to be general, so it can be used as a research platform to test many different concepts. That said, there are some basic things that we want to be able to sense. • Presence: The chair needs to sense when someone is

and is not sitting in the chair. In addition, the chair needs to be aware of how long someone has been sitting.

• User Activity: For context sensitive applications, the chair needs to know about activities the user might be conducting. For example, knowing if the user is awake or asleep, watching television or reading, so the system will know the best way to interact with them. Some of these activities may best be sensed with biological sensors embedded into the slipcover.

Sensor Requirements We developed a set of ten requirements for the sensors based on our interviews and focus groups. By following these design requirements for the sensors, they will give us the sensing information needed in order to assist elders, and

will be more likely accepted. This list of requirements can be divided into design requirements and technological ones. Design Requirements These requirements of the sensors are describe the design of the sensors and their interaction with the user. • Adaptable. This is one of the most important

requirements for the sensors because they need to be able to be incorporated into many different types of chairs, including recliners and sofas. It is also important that these sensors do not damage the existing chair, and can be installed easily.

• Comfortable. The user is going to be sitting on this technology for a long period of time, so it needs to be comfortable.

• Durable. The sensors need to be able to withstand everyday use; specifically they cannot be made of any fragile materials. They must withstand the weight of someone sitting on them for long periods of time without losing their shape or accuracy. Additionally, they need to be flexible enough to not break when sat on or when the occupant moves while sitting on them. It is also important for them to be easily cleaned, if needed.

• Safe. Since these sensors are going to be so close to the user’s body, there cannot be any exposed wires or put the user in any sort of danger.

• Aesthetic. One major factor in designing technology for the home is that it needs to be aesthetic or at least adaptable to different home settings.

• Natural. It is important to preserve the existing human-chair interaction, and not have the technology change it. The technology should be “invisible” so the user doesn’t think of the chair differently.

• Affordable. The cost of the sensors needs to be low in order to get realistic acceptance from elders. Additionally, it is also an important factor when considering the replacement cost of the sensors since they are likely to get damaged from everyday wear and tear or drink spills.

Technological Requirements While these sensors must accommodate so many different design requirements, there are also some technical requirements that they must meet in order to be useful sensors. • Accurate. Since these sensors will be used as the

sensing component to a system that responds to user input, it is important that they be accurate.

• Reliable. These sensors must also be reliable. One way to ensure reliability is to design these sensors for many different conditions of use. One example of this is to realize that many people eat and drink in their chairs, and to make sure the sensors will still work if they get spilled on.

• Meaningful. It is also important to make sure that the data these sensors yield is meaningful. This also covers making sure that there aren’t frivolous sensors, and that each one gives useful and telling data about its user. While a contradiction to one of the findings of Beaudin et al., we feel that this is an important feature for acceptance.

Applications We see the Sense Lounger as a system that can be used for many different applications. One powerful yet technologically simple application using the Sense Lounger measures how long someone is sitting in the chair, and how frequently they get out of it. In our focus group we got a positive response about an application that gave the user a subtle clue (backrub) that they had been sitting still in the chair for “too long”. This application got a positive response because the elders liked the idea of a chair capable of giving them massages, and they admitted to having a hard time remembering not to sit still too long because it leaves them feeling stiff when they get up. Simply knowing how long the user spends in the chair can also be used as a simple activity monitor for family members and caregivers. In addition to detecting presence, another application for the Sense Lounger is to sense the occupant’s current activity. Once the lounger is able to recognize activity, context sensitive applications can easily be integrated into it. For example, if the lounger knows the user’s schedule and detects that the occupant is taking a nap in their chair it will be able to make sure that the user wakes up from their nap in plenty of time to still make an appointment.

SENSE LOUNGER DESIGN We decided that the design that best met these requirements was a “Smart Slipcover” that went over the chair, and force sensors which slipped under the legs of the chair. Smart Slipcover This slipcover has sensors sewn into it which are made out of a conductive fabric. These sensors detect what parts of the chair the user is touching, and are strategically placed throughout the seat, back and armrests of the chair. This information is then used to determine the posture of the chair’s occupant. There is a total of 16 of these sensors in the chair: 6 on the back, 6 on the seat, and 2 on each armrest. Figure1 has a view of the placement of these sensors. We conducted a design exploration of many different conductive materials that we could use in order to make these soft sensors. We evaluated several different conductive materials and evaluated them based on how they met the sensor requirements described above. We looked at materials such as conductive foam, conductive mesh, conductive paint, and tin foil.

Figure 4. Final seat sensor layout sketch (left) prototype made

out of conductive fabric and conductive thread (right)

While all inexpensive, durability and comfort were two of the major problems with these conductive materials. The conductive foam was comfortable to sit on, but it was quite thick and lost its shape after sitting on it for a while. Tin foil was an extremely inexpensive and highly conductive material, however it wasn’t durable enough. It would tear when you would move while sitting on it, or if you bent or folded it. We found that painting conductive paint on fabric was a very fast way to build a sensor, but it wasn’t very conductive and required so many coats of it that it became very hard when it dried. The conductive mesh was a type of wire screening that is put on windows, but it was too inflexible and was too difficult to work with and secure its ends so it wouldn’t fray and poke you with wires. We finally decided on using the same material used in [18], a conductive fabric called Silk Organza, which is 80% metal and 20% silk. The conductive fabric was sewn onto a piece of fabric with a conductive thread. The conductive fabric and thread were used to draw a “circuit” on a regular piece of fabric, where thread were the wire traces. As an alternative to using both conductive thread and fabric, it would have been possible to embroider the conductive thread onto the fabric. However this was technically challenging for us because the conductive thread was so thick that it would only fit in the bobbin of a sewing machine. The fabric sensors have a simple design. They are composed of two pieces of conductive fabric, which sandwiches an insulator (a piece of rubber mesh which is the same size as the two pieces of fabric). This insulator separates the conductive fabric enough so that they touch when enough pressure is applied to them. The amount of pressure is dependent on the thickness of the insulator, and after experimenting with different types of insulators; we chose one that only allows the connection when there are five or more pounds on the sensor. These sensors are binary and can only sense if the conductive materials are touching or aren’t. Sensor Layout After choosing the material for the sensors to be made out of, we had to decide the placement of the sensors on the chair. In order to determine which parts of the chairs should have sensors, we videotaped a member of our team sitting in a chair performing the same activities our elders reported doing: reading, talking on the phone, watching

television. Then we analyzed these videos to see which parts of his body touched the chair during these activities. From this investigation, we decided to put sensors in the back, seat and arm rests of the chair. Next we began investigating how these sensors should be organized within the slipcover. We started doing this by sketching different sensor layouts. Throughout this design exploration we wanted to make the sensors general enough that they would accommodate different body sizes, and give data about the body position of the chair’s occupant. We were looking for such body positions as: crossing a leg, sitting forward in the chair, without touching the back, and sitting back in the chair. After making initial sketches we made paper prototypes to get a sense for the physical size of these sensors. Once the size was settled, we made a set of working prototypes which could be repositioned to finalize the layout of the sensor. Figure 4 shows the final layout of the seat sensor. Force Sensors In addition to the binary sensors in the smart slipcover, we chose a design that also incorporated force sensors attached to the legs of the chair. We use these sensors to detect additional information that the binary sensors in the slipcover miss. For example, these sensors are able to sense the weight distribution of the chairs legs, which can indicate which side of the chair the occupant is favoring. The force sensitive resistors we chose to use are quite small, 2mm x 2mm and are able to withstand up to 3 kilograms of force. Since the force of someone sitting on a chair is more than 3 kilograms, we had to insulate these sensors so they do not max out from the pressure of the chair. We considered using four load cells, but decided that there were too expensive for our requirements.

Figure 5. The force sensing resistors are 2mm by 2mm.

Current Status Both the smart slipcover and the force sensors are powered by a PIC16F76 and a serial interface to a computer. We chose this chip because it had enough input pins for our needs and provides ADC conversion. It is a low power chip (5V @ 5mA) and inexpensive chip with a 10MHz clock crystal. The chip sends the connected computer sensor values which are then logged. We also wrote an OpenGL visualization of the sensor data which can be displayed in real time or can generate visualizations from the log files. An example of this visualization given an occupant on the chair is in Figure 6.

Figure 6. User in Sense Lounger crossing their leg and leaning

to the left (left) and visualization showing real time sensor data (right). Visualization shows which sensors are triggered

by user and colors them white, the color of legs denotes the amount of pressure they sense by a ligher color.

These sensors are currently able to detect the presence of someone sitting on them, and are able to calculate how long they have been sitting there. In addition to detecting presence, we are able to use the raw sensor data in order to detect the posture of the person sitting in the chair. These postures include, crossing the left or right leg, sitting forward in the chair and leaning in the chair. It is also able to detect if the person is sitting still in the chair, or if they are moving around and shifting their weight.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Future work includes exploring different techniques for the user to explicitly interact with their chair, or the “Human Chair Interaction.” We are currently exploring an input device that is sewn into the arm rests of a chair which enables the user to control a television and set reminder timers. We plan on running a study to learn how people react to this input device and to measure how effective it is. Additionally, work needs to be done in order for the chair to do more than simply monitor, and be able to output information. We currently see several opportunities here, including device control, tactile displays, or visual displays. We also plan on incorporating machine learning to the current sensors so we will be able to recognize the occupant’s activity. We believe that knowing their activity is the first step to developing context sensitive interactions between the user and the chair and it will also help serve as a monitoring device. Finally, we plan on running a study to determine the accuracy of these sensors with people of different body sizes, and measure how well we can recognize body position and activity. We have described the Sense Lounger, a unique combination of sensors which we feel will help ubicomp be more greatly accepted in the home. We also see this as technology which will help make aging in place due to technology more realistic for elders. Our methodology of combing design and technological research and following the MAYA principle, has helped us design a unique and useful system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank all of our interviews and focus group participants. Without their input we would not have been able to form such an in-depth understanding of elders’ relationships with their chairs, or received such useful feedback about our concepts. This work is partially funded by NSF IIS-0121426

REFERENCES 1. Abowd, G.D. and Mynatt, E.D. Charting past, present,

and future research in ubiquitous computing. ACM Transactions On Computer Human Interaction, volume 7, (2000), 29-58.

2. Beaudin, J., Intille, S. and Tapia, E.M., Lessons learned using ubiquitous sesnors for data collection in real homes. in Extended abstracts of the 2004 conference on Human factors and computing systems, (2004), ACM Press, 1359-1362.

3. Fay, M., Woulfe. M., Tsvetkov, S., Haahr, M., Smart Couch, Distributed Systems Group, Trinity College Dublin (http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/?category_id=350)

4. Forlizzi, J., DiSalvo, C., Gemperle, F., Assistive Robotics and an ecology of Elders Living Independently in Their Homes, in Journal of Human Computer Interaction, volume 16. 2004.

5. Gitlin, L., N Why older people accept or reject assistive technology. Generations, volume 19, (1995) 41-56.

6. Gemperle, F., DiSalvo, C., Forlizzi, J. and Yonkers, W., The Hug: a new form for communication. in Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences, (2003), ACM Press, 1-4.

7. Gemperle, F., Kasabach, C., Stivoric, J., Bauer. M., Martin, R. Design for the Wearability. In Proceedings of the 2nd conference of International symposium on Wearable Computers, (1998), IEEE Press, 116-122.

8. Homelab, Philips Design (http://www.research.philips.com/technologies/misc/homelab/index.html).

9. Intille, S.S. Designing a Home of the Future. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1 (2002), 76-82.

10. Kidd, C.D., Orr, R., Abowd, G.D., Atkeson, C.G., Essa, I.A., MacIntyre, B., Mynatt, E.D., Starner, T. and Newstetter, W., The Aware Home: A Living Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing Research. in Cooperative Buildings, (1999), 191-198.

11. Lawler, K. Aging In Place: Coordinating Housing and Health Care Provision for America’s Growing Elderly Population, Joint Center for Housing center of Harvard University neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, (2001).

12. Lowey, R. MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable (http://www.raymondloewyfoundation.com/about/maya.html)

13. Marculescu, D., Marculescu, R. and Khosla, P.K., Challenges and opportunities in electronic textiles modeling and optimization. in Proceedings of the 39th conference on Design automation, (2002), ACM Press, 175-180.

14. Monk, A., Brant, J., Wright, P. and Robinson, J., CUHTec: the Centre for Usable Home Technology. in Extended abstracts of the 2004 conference on Human factors and computing systems, (2004), ACM Press, 1073-1074.

15. Mynatt, E.D., Rowan, J., Craighill, S. and Jacobs, A., Digital family portraits: supporting peace of mind for extended family members. in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, (2001), ACM Press, 333-340.

16. Rodin, J., Langer, E., Long-Term Effects of a Control-Relevant Intervention with Institutional Aged,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, volume 35, (1977), 897-902.

17. Population Projections Program, Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. 20233 (301) 763-2436 (2000). (http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/natdet-D1A.html)

18. Post, E.R. and Orth, M., Smart Fabric, or Washable Computing. in Proceedings of the 1st conference of International Symposium of Wearable Computers (1997), IEEE, 167-168.

19. Tan, H.Z., Silvovsky, L.A. and Petland, A. A Sesning Chair Using Pressure Distribution Sensors. In IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, volume 6. (2001), 261-268

Contribution Statement: Describes the user-centered design and development process of ubiquitous technology in the form of a sensor chair for elders, in order to help them age in place.