Methodology for designing, implementing and evaluating assistive mobility technology to enable the social inclusion and independence needs of an ageing population

Seamless mobile navigation will reinforce social inclusion of people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and will lower their anxiety levels when mobile in their usual habitats as they have at hand a means to support them in cases such as where they lose their way or forget where they were going. We have continued development from existing studies of vibrotactile displays (Van Erp, 2007), for our first prototype of a wearable assistive navigation device that gives a range of sensitive haptic feedback as part of an intended larger project. The larger project will develop methods and technology that provide “companion navigators”, which are of significant importance for social inclusion for people with navigation problems (Hansen et al, 2009). In addition, we add the concept of PeerCare as developed by Riche & MacKay (2010) in order to create a system that enhances the ability of elderly peers to communicate with and care for each other (Hutchinson et al, 2003). We describe here our methods for observing participants operating in their homes and usual habitats in order to design for their specific needs and to build a scalable living lab method (Winthereik et al, 2009) for urban and regional environments. As the prototypes become more robust, the repertoire expands and the user group is enlarged meaning a triangulation of design and testing methods is required.