Designing an Abnormal Posture Detection System to Prevent Accidents During Meal Assistance for Older Adults: A User-Centered Design Approach

This paper proposes a user-centered design (UCD) method and demonstrates the assistive device design, incorporating user involvement and the risk management approach throughout the design process, in a Japanese day-care facility for older adults. The study focused on the lunchtime problem, where there is a limited number of nursing staff for meal assistance and supervision of users to ensure their safety. An abnormal posture notification system that met the technical/functional and user requirements was successfully designed by conducting participant observations and using human error-proofing principles. This approach enabled timely identification of proper solutions in the care facility and areas for improvement, and thus the discovery of users and use-cases that were not initially envisioned.