Play for the Elderly - Effect Studies of Playful Technology

摘要

This paper addresses play for the elderly, and how playware can act as a play force that pushes people into a play dynamics. Play is a free and voluntary activity that we do for no other purpose than the play and enjoyment. Nevertheless, we may observe collateral effects of play amongst the elderly, e.g. in terms of health effects. The paper presents both qualitative and quantitative studies of the effect of play amongst elderly. For instance, it is shown how playful training on modular interactive tiles show statistical significant effects on all the test measures of elderly functional abilities (e.g. balancing, strength, mobility, agility, endurance) after merely 13 group training sessions during which each elderly play (exercise) for just 12-13 min. Hence, the statistical significant effects are obtained after just 2-3 h of total playing time with such playful technology. In play, the elderly seem to forget about time and place (e.g. forget about their possible fear of falling and physical limitations), and thereby achieve the remarkable collateral effect on their health.