Tangible Cup for Elderly Social Interaction: Design TUI for & with Elderly

Abstract

Social interaction is found to have significant impacts in our quality of life. Information and communications technology (ICT) has been designed to improve our social interaction and well-being. Elderly people face challenges in learning and using ICT due to their age-related limitations and that they are non-digital natives. Their needs are not sufficiently addressed in ICT systems. Tangible user interface (TUI) which couples digital information to everyday physical object is considered to be more intuitive and suitable for elderly people. TUI has been adopted in some studies in order to improve quality of life in the elderly, but very few focus on the social aspect. Thus, this research aims to develop a TUI to improve elderly social interaction and wellbeing. We have adopted user-centered design and co-design approach in designing the Tangible Cup. Through the design process, we generated a list of lessons learned which can serve as a guide for what to consider when designing TUI for elderly people and when involving elderly people in the design process.