Design and Evaluation of Web Interfaces for Informal Care Providers in Senior Monitoring

摘要

It has been recognized that most seniors prefer to age in aplace with familiar surroundings until their health makesthis impossible. In an attempt to address the agingphenomenon, as well as recognize seniors’ preference, weworked with a Canada-based company that develops asensor-based home monitoring system for people tomonitor the home activities of independently living seniors.Our role was to develop web interfaces that present sensordata to the intended web users – the seniors’ informal careproviders (e.g., their close friends or family members). Inthis paper, we present the information design and the webinterface prototypes, and report the results of our formativeevaluations through cognitive walkthrough and heuristicevaluation methods. The common problems discovered inboth methods were problematic notification mechanism,inconsistency, background and layout. Each method alsodetected usability issues that the other did not. Our workadds more empirical evidence to the importance ofcombining evaluation methods in a study. The experiencesin this study also helped us reflect on approaches andstrategies when working with industry partners.