Fostering Social Interaction in AAL: Methodological reflections on the coupling of real household Living Lab and SmartHome approaches

project ideas (as they commonly exist as more abstract representations in the starting stage of projects) and concrete topics of conversation (which are needed for elderly people to be able to think about what would be meaningful for them) is an ongoing process. Getting access: Finding elderly persons for only one interview is not a big problem. However, it is different when not only an involvement of some hours, but rather a longstanding involvement is asked. Then people are careful and reluctant at first, and the missing common thinking space contributes negatively to the access problem. The head tutor of the computer club in Germany and the director of the prevention center in France contributed here a lot in their function as a “door-opener”. Motivation: At the beginning of our project we were lacking ‘anchor points’, i.e. topics of interest of the people to which we could link our view and imaginations of possible ICT usages. In other words, we did not know how to best motivate them. The media as such did not serve as a sufficient motivation. However, the interviews and even more the regular meetings and chats with the participants helped us in identifying common topics. Trust building: The build-up of a trustful relationship to tutors and members turned out to be the most important basis for a successful living lab set-up and helped us to gain our targets. However, as outlined this requires sincere and continuous personal commitment and effort. Reciprocity: A mutual relationship at eye level is a crucial milestone for trust building. That means that our research is ‘giving and receiving’, maybe much stronger than it would be when accomplishing other methods. We not only act as researchers, but also as advisers or technology supporters, and not only during faceto-face meetings, but also when we are reachable by mail and phone. To invite the elderly end-users to our “spaces” in Germany and France was another important activity for an ongoing installation of eye level. For the elderly club members this was of high importance to get a clearer picture about us. During meetings with the participants in the computer club environment in Germany as well as in the homes in France, trust building measures contributed to the ongoing construction of a common space of thinking which helped the elderly people in standing the abstractness of a beginning research project and successively back-up ideas against the background of their every-day life. Some even got more courage to dig deeper into the topic, e.g. when taking smartphones at their homes and testing them despite their first reluctance and from that point on, developing their own ideas of use options. Insofar, our long-term Living Lab approach served as a double function: as a door-opener to the space of thinking of non-ICT familiar elderly people and as an ongoing research instrument in the research project. While the real household LL approach has advantages for the evaluation in everyday life, there are challenges to testing specific research questions in a more controlled environment. To address these challenges, we have used additional lab studies in the SmartHome environment our proiect and present our methodological approach, measures and results in the following sections. 3. Our SmartHome approach To test the developed prototypes in a controlled use situation and to involve additional test users into the development process, we conducted several studies in a SmartHome Living Room environment in Germany. In contrast to real household living labs which often require prototypes of a more matured stage for evaluation, lab studies can be conducted at an early stage and early results can be included in the development cycle to adapt the system. The controlled and focused lab situation supports that also only specific parts or concepts of the prototypes can be evaluated. So to speak, the tested technological application is considered from a worm’s-eye view. Nevertheless, as it is difficult for elderly people to imagine ICT ideas or solutions that are currently not available, it is helpful to offer concrete functionalities of the technical system to the test users. Although our evaluation included the described characteristics of a classical lab study, it also contains aspects that go beyond that. One aspect is the implementation of our studies within the Fraunhofer InHaus 2 Center in Duisburg, making use of a SmartHome environment with two semi-realistic living rooms in which a real TV situation scenario can be simulated. In order to reinforce the living room atmosphere, we placed common furniture items as well as decoration in the two rooms. In this way the artificial context of normal laboratory studies was substituted by a more natural context. Based on the participant’s responses, the provided environment in the SmartHome living rooms made it possible for participants to ‘feel at home’ and behave similar to as in real life, in contrast to traditional laboratory studies that are often conducted in more abstract lab environments. In the following chapter, we provide closer insights into one of our SmartHome Lab studies analyzing concrete instances of awareness and social presence support depending on the TV genre in SmartTV contexts. This allows us to analyze how specific functionalities should be built and when they should be offered.