Project Review Senior Citizens Personal Mobile Assistant Team Number 8 Gauri Tikekar (7749) Madhuri Murlikrishnan (0719) Siddharth Adelkar (6271) (On Campus Students)

Project Introduction Idea: Personal assistant application for senior citizens to help them in their activities on a PDA phone. behind this Idea: Motivation behind this Idea:   Applications we see today are developed majorly for the younger generation   Mouse and keyboard inputs are difficult for elderly people to use.   We need devices and applications which are simpler to use in their day to day life.Uniqueness:   People are working on incorporating features in GUI for computers   Targeted at the benefit of the older people   Developing something on a small device for such people is a challenge. Why this System:   We propose to design this system that serves the daily needs of the senior citizens   Help them better organize their important activities

System Requirements  Emergency Sending: Facility of calling the Emergency services in at most two strokes and a confirmation  Draft Messages: These messages shall be delivered to the concerned person(s) on the other end.  Recording System: This is used for composing the messages that will be delivered on relevant key press.  GPS Facility: This will add the location or address of the user and inform of this to the emergency service as well as emergency contacts (as mentioned by the user).  Input Mechanisms: We provide three input methods which are Speech Recognition, Handwriting Recognition and easy to use Onscreen Keyboard.  Reminders: The system provides three kinds of reminders, namely Appointment Reminders, Medicine reminders and Event reminders.

Navigation Map

User Analysis Discussion User Profile: Psychological Characteristics:   The cognitive style is verbal/analytical.   The Attitude is low/neutral as the system is new and users have less knowledge   The motivation high / moderate as the system is useful for day to day activities. Knowledge and Experience:   Computer skills, reading skills and task experience may vary from low to high   Their system experience would be Novice as they are new users of this system.   Native Language is assumed to be English or the user should know English.

User Analysis Discussion Job and Task Characteristics:   The frequency of use is moderate in the beginning but will grow with familiarity   The task importance is high since the system handles emergency situations   The job category for this system would be for personal use   The user requires no primary training (or may be only manual) Physical Characteristics:   The system is mainly for users above 45 years of age, irrespective of the gender.   The user of the system may or may not have poor eyesight / colorblindness.   The system handedness is Ambidextrous.

User Analysis Discussion Dialogue Styles: Dialogue Styles Implemented: 1. Menu: Very simple menus in form of a list of buttons on a touch screen. 2. Fill in forms: All configurations like message composing, reminders entry etc. are done by filling simple forms with at most 5 fields. 3. Question and Answering: Our system has no or very little interaction with the users with respect to questioning for information. 4. Natural Language: Our system most definitely provides Natural language processing in form of text or voice as the users are not necessarily computer literates. 5. Direct Manipulation: This helps our system interface to be compatible to users that are lacking in training and system/application experience.

User Analysis Discussion Dialogue Styles NOT Implemented: Command Language: Requires positive attitude, high motivation, moderate/high typing skills and high system/task experience.   Our users may be computer (PDA) illiterate in the worst case scenario.   Thus, they cannot have positive attitude as they are unaware of the system.   Their motivation will not be low as this system will be very useful for them.   Their typing skills may not be high for the reasons such as aging   They have no or very low system or task experience.   Hence, command language is not used as a dialog style for our system. 2. Function Keys:   Requires the user to have high system and technical experience.   Our main aim of the system is to reduce the complexity and make it user friendly.   Thus usage of function keys does not serve our goal, and hence its not implemented

User Analysis Discussion Task Analysis Context Free Diagram

User Analysis Discussion 1st Level DFD for 1.0 (Emergency Configuration)

User Analysis Discussion 2nd Level DFD for 1.1(Configure Emergency Contact Details)

User Analysis Discussion 2nd Level DFD for 1.2 (Emergency Messages Configuration)

User Analysis Discussion 1st Level DFD for 2.0(Reminders Configuration)

User Analysis Discussion 2nd Level DFD for 3.0 (Sending Messages to concern contacts)

User Analysis Discussion User Environment and I/O Devices: User environmental conditions: The system is useful in mobile environments eg. when the person is out and alone. Thus we make use of PDA as the device on which we will develop our system. I/O Devices: Our system has three kinds of input methods. They are the following:   Handwriting Recognition: This helps the users who do not have typing skills to interact with the system conveniently.   Voice Recognition: This helps the user to interact, record emergency messages and avoid typing.   Onscreen Keyboard: We plan to design a special keyboard having minimal keys and T9 on/off facility.   Touch Screen: This input device provided by the PDA, will perform the functions of navigation, analogous to a mouse on a desktop computer.

Style Guide  White Background.  Button Sizes: 160 X 40 and 80 X 40 pixels Larger in size and legible. Touch Screen Buttons.  Colors: Used Category wise for consistency. Messages, Events, Home, Relatives. Medicine, Doctor, Pharmacy, Emergency. Exit, Save, Next, Back. Appointments, Phone Book. All choices “keyboard”, “pen” etc in pink or light blue color.

Style Guide  Colors are propagated to show navigation.  Icons: Synchronization of picture and text on button. Easy to remember the functionality.  Icons are propagated to show navigation.

Mobile Assistant Screens Desktop Icons Clock Icon: An Alarm Clock Icon suitable for Reminders. An Envelope and a Message Inside, a suitable icon for Messages. An Ambulance is a good icon for Emergency.

Mobile Assistant Screens Emergency Configuration Message Draft Icon depicts a Recording facility as well as Writing. Phone Book is an obvious icon

Mobile Assistant Screens Message Drafts Yellow Color for Buttons – Consistent with “Message Draft”. Message Draft icon propagated.

Mobile Assistant Screens New Message Entry

New Message Steps  Choose the contacts to whom the message will be sent.  Emergency Message Checkbox : At a time the system can have only two such emergency messages. Rest will only be future drafts.  Drafted messages will be linked with the current user’s location using GPS while actually sending the message.

Mobile Assistant Screens Reminder Configuration  Appointments Icon – Calendar.  Events Icon – Celebration.  Medicine Icon – Medical Plus.

Mobile Assistant Screens  Green Color – Consistent with Appointment.  Appointment Icon Propagated. Appointment Reminders Configuration

Mobile Assistant Screens New Appointment Entry

Mobile Assistant Screens  Calendar icon near Date and Time fields to select date and time. (No typing)  Two Types of Reminders Setting available –  Template (Detailed one)  Simple Text  Doctor’s Information: Name, Hospital, Office Hrs, Address.  Doctor’s entry is one time in system. Stored for future use.  When Simple Text selected, directly fourth step screen opened.  “Link to doctor “ checkbox visible only while “simple text”.

Mobile Assistant Screens New Appointment Entry

Mobile Assistant Screens Sending Emergency Icons

Screens not Included Here  Edit/Delete functionality.  Phone Book Details.  Event, Medicine Reminders Config. Details.  Confirmation, Acknowledgement and Reminder Alarms.

Comments  Challenge to work on a PDA especially for this application meant for old people.  Tool Used: Embedded Visual Basic 3.0  Provides a Pocket PC emulator and allows to create a project on it.  Good for prototype design.  Your Suggestions for improvement are welcome.  Rest of semester plan – Better onscreen keyboard design. Developing a working model of the system.

References  Nielsen Norman, “Web Usability for Senior Citizens: 46 Design Guidelines Based on Usability Studies with People Age 65 and Older”,  Brian Kritzstein, “PDAs: Appropriate For Every Age Level”,  For Embedded Visual Basic F48-31EE-4CBE-AAC5-0AFFD5FB27DD&displaylang=en F48-31EE-4CBE-AAC5-0AFFD5FB27DD&displaylang=en  Icons chosen from