Charles Willems*, Saxion university, Enschede, Netherlands Mark Brul, Saxion, Enschede, Netherlands R.m.h.a. Huis In ‘t Veld, RRD, Enschede, Netherlands H. Hermens*, RRD, Enschede, Netherlands Lisette Van Gemert-pijnen*, UTwente, Enschede, Netherlands Track: Research Presentation Topic: Participatory health care Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Panel Presentation Building: MECC Room: Trajectum Last modified: 2010-09-23

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Telecare systems show the potential for elderly to remain in-home for a longer period by increasing early detection of behavioural changes and adapt home care delivery. As 37% of the telecare initiatives fail due to a lacking user acceptance of the technology, involving users in the design process and taking their needs as onset for design is regarded as a prerequisite. However involving caregivers as contemplated users in the design process raises several barriers. Caregivers are overall technically illiterate, unable to address their needs for technology and their involvement faces a vocabulary gap with developers. Secondly, the fuzzy process of needs elicitation and translating these into formal requirements is part of the challenge to overcome this mutual vocabulary gap. Our work presents a practical multi-step framework to involve caregivers in the initial phase of a design process of a telecare system. The framework is deployed to conceptually design an activity monitoring system to support informal and professional caregivers in home care delivery for solitary in-home demented persons. Methods A multi-step framework was deployed based on contextual design and user centered design methods, supported by an evolving set of scenarios. Based on a contextual study in home care delivery a user story was written and used as onset for eliciting caregivers’ needs in a workshop. Secondly, functional requirements (FR’s) and non-functional requirements (NFR’s) were defined based on caregivers’ evaluation of a conceptual scenario and mock-ups that were generated based on the insights from the workshop. Results and discussion In the three hours workshop the user story leaded to a clear discussion and prioritization of needs, whereas caregivers (n=9) underlined the need for technology to improve the quality of home care delivery. The two most important activities, eating and drinking and sleeping, were selected by the group for further development. The conceptual scenario and mock-ups were insightful for caregivers (n=5) and they were able to constructively evaluate and (re)define a set of 28 FR’s and 7 NFR’s. The FR’s were defined qualitatively and reflected the functionality of the system in terms of specific activities to monitor, generic data transmission functions and method of presenting the information (interface). The NFR’s were often articulated as concerns regarding the contemplated system and reflected practical concerns for the demented persons (e.g. non-wearable sensors, unobtrusiveness) and the caregivers work activities (e.g. ease of use, validity of information). The NFR’s are used as design criteria to make design choices in the following step towards a system architecture. This study showed that scenarios enabled us to elicit unarticulated needs of caregivers and evaluate FR’s and NFR’s. Secondly, scenarios enabled caregivers to understand and respond to technical concepts in order to constructively involve them in the design process. A future challenge is to translate needs to requirements in a workshop involving both caregivers and technicians in order to define requirements quantitatively, using scenarios as a common platform for discussion.