Designing Smart Homes for Families in Singapore - Integrating Smart Home Technology into Daily Living of Elderly

摘要

It is believed that with the rise in information technology, home occupants can gain independence through the adoption of smart home technologies. Most elderly in the western part of the world live independently and at a distance from their children. In comparison, most elderly in Singapore live together with their children. Hence, smart home research to help elderly live independently in the west may not be directly applicable to the eastern societies. With the different family structures in Asia, there is a need to study smart home users' concerns and to understand their current lifestyle. In Singapore, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has built a smart home to study the needs and attitudes towards smart home technologies for families here. In order to understand the current lifestyles of families, ethnographic studies were carried out in both subjects' homes and at the smart home. This paper discusses our findings from our observations and interview studies. The “wishes” of potential smart home users in Singapore, their needs for certain technologies, how a smart home could assist in the daily living of extended families and how well their needs were met by the some of the smart home solution in A*STAR will be discussed.