Identifying Elderly People’s Needs

Identifying elderly people's needs

for communication and mobility

Sauli Tiitta

HIIT (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology), Finland

sauli.tiitta@hiit.fi

Keywords

Elderly people; communication; mobility; participatory observation; narratives, user

needs; security and group coherence.

Abstract

The Finnish parliament's future commission has listed challenges in elderly peoples

lives that could be overcome using new technology. The two most important inhibiting

factors affecting the quality of life of elderly people were identified as solitude

and immobility (O Kuusi, 2001). The purpose of this research is to identify everyday

motivational needs concerning communication and mobility of elderly people and

present a categorization that can be exploited when designing information appliances

to overcome these difficulties.

Qualitative user research was used for identifying the phenomena typical in

elderly people lives. Out of all observed phenomena the ones that were related to

the elderly people's habits for communication and mobility were selected. These

phenomena were documented in the form of narratives, which were individually

analysed in order to uncover the motivational needs that resulted in the observed

phenomenon.