[en] Life events, such as retirement or being widowed, can change the social circle of older people considerably. It may be difficult to find new social contacts when one has never got used to, or perhaps even never learnt, to seek and maintain those contacts. Loneliness has many negative effects for well-being, including depression and even cardiovascular disease. The Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL-JP) research project V2me seeks to find a solution for alleviating loneliness by means of easy-to-use technology including touch screen devices. The idea is to use a virtual coach for encouraging users to take an active role in contacting people and teaching them how to initiate and maintain meaningful and enduring relations. The first step, in the process of creating the complete virtual coach-assisted system for preventing loneliness, is to create a prototype and use the feedback from older users for developing the system. In this paper we discuss the results of the first pilot and what steps need to be taken next.
Disciplines :
Sociology & social sciences Computer science Social & behavioral sciences, psychology: Multidisciplinary, general & others
Identifiers :
UNILU:UL-ARTICLE-2012-651
Author, co-author :
Muuraiskangas, Salla; VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
LEIST, Anja ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Integrative Research Unit: Social and Individual Development (INSIDE)
Braun, Andreas; Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD
Wichert, Reiner; Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD
Klein, Peter; User Interface Design GmbH
FERRING, Dieter ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Integrative Research Unit: Social and Individual Development (INSIDE)
Language :
English
Title :
V2me: Evaluating the first steps in mobile friendship coaching
Publication date :
2012
Journal title :
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, in press