Household appliances control device for the elderly On how to encourage universal usability in the home environment

Introduction Multi-modal interface for elderly and visually impaired users Project description Investigation of musical earcons Comparison of three modalities: Audio Vs visual Vs audio+visual Use of musical earcons in a household appliance control device aimed specially at elderly and visually impaired users.

Interface ImageSound General users group Elderly Visually impaire d Deaf Model of the proposed interface in relation with various users groups. Multimodal User Interface

Domotics Domotics, the application of information and communication technologies for more comfort and convenience in and around the home (Plesea,02) Role of computers in everyday life (office, home, public spaces)

Elderly Increase ageing population Sensory loss: Hearing loss Vision loss Psychological and social gain

Musical Earcons Earcons: Non-verbal audio messages used in the user- computer interface to provide information to the user about some computer object, operation or interaction. Musical Tunes

+ Earcon on off Appliance 1 Appliance 2 Appliance 3 Appliance 4 Appliance 5 Appliance 6 Motive 1Motive 2 Earcon composition structure First component from the status information (mutually exclusive) and second component from the appliance/s component (mutually exclusive).

Interface Design Tools used in the design process: Cognitive science Participatory design Iterative design

Design Process Technical constrains Human constraints Users preferences Users evaluation Final Product Human-machine interaction principles Cognitive knowledge Participatory design

Visual interface First set of icons presented Selection Second set of icons presented Modification First icons interface prototype Icons Design process The first set of 6 icons was presented to rest home residents. From those 6 icons 3 were selected as the preferred ones among the interviews. The 3 selected items were presented to staff and students at JMU age ranging from 18 to 62 and to visually impaired users aged from 21 to 58.

Bath design process

Audio interface First set earcons designed Redesign Second set earcons developed First earcons Interface prototype Modification Earcons Design Process The first set of earcons was developed and redesign by music expert. Second set of earcons is analysed and modified according to earcon design principles, and opinion given by visually impaired users.

Audio interface Bath Off Bath On Bath Off Bath On

Visual interface

Evaluation Speed of performance Errors: Type 1:Wrong identification of appliance and status Type 2:Wrong appliance identification Type 3:Wrong status identification Subjective evaluation

Pre-test results Number of error greater than expected; 71% incorrect identifications

Table results MinimumMaximumMeanStd. Deviation AUDIO VISUAL MULTIMOD Table 1. Test 2 Descriptive statistics, time in seconds.

Conclusions Welcome idea; both elderly and visually impaired liked the idea. Learning time; long and hard Design needs improving

Future steps Test using different musical instruments Test while users are engaged in other activities

Why are we not advancing as expected?