Companion mobile applications for personal service recommendation

Abstract

Population aging has been a increasing trend over the past few years. As people grow aged, they will have gathered many different experiences, perceptions and mental models of the world, as well as possibly suffered the rigours of physical demise in various forms such as vision and hearing. Thia demise will affect the elderly in Aging In Place (AIP). Aging In Place refers to “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level”. On the other hand, the functions of smartphone are getting powerful and its built in sensors can help in monitoring the well being of the elderly at home. Therefore the objective of this project is to implement a mobile application to help elderly in AIP by reducing the inconvenience caused by the demise.

The author worked with other Final Year Project teammates to present a project with the combination of website and other virtual agents. There are some virtual agents exists in the market but very few of them are specially cater for the need of the elderly. Therefore, the smart phone application, Smart Butler, a mobile application that specially caters to the need of the elderly is introduced. The design of Smart Butler considers the human factor of the elderly and provides solution to overcome the problems they faced and simple user interface is implemented to help them to overcome their techno-phobia within one application.

One of the traits that make Smart Butler stand out from the rest of the applications is the customized interaction for the elderly. The Smart Butler is able to initiate conversation and ask question proactively according to different environment and context. In addition, the ability of reminding the elderly with the upcoming events by different priority level minimize the interruption while using the apps as well as making sure the urgency of each event are awared by the elderly.

In this report, the author outlines some of the background research done with respect to this project, followed by requirement analysis involved in developing the Android mobile application for deployment. Lastly, the report is concluded with a summary of the progress in the development and the future possible development of this project.