Involving Older Adults During COVID-19 Restrictions in Developing an Ecosystem Supporting Active Aging: Overview of Alternative Elicitation Methods and Common Requirements From Five European Countries

Eliciting and modeling emotional requirements: a systematic mapping review

Context

Considering users' emotions plays an extremely crucial role in the adoption and acceptance of recent technology by the end user. User emotions can also help to identify unknown requirements, saving resources that would otherwise be wasted if discovered later. However, eliciting and modeling users' emotional requirements in software engineering is still an open research area.

Objective

This systematic mapping review analyzes emotional requirements (ER) practices in software engineering from two perspectives: elicitation and modeling. For elicitation techniques, we investigate the techniques, evaluation methods, limitations, and application domains. For modeling techniques, we examine the modeling languages, analyses, limitations, and domains.

Method

We systematically reviewed studies on emotional requirements engineering published between 1993-2023 and identified 46 relevant primary studies.

Results

A total of 34 studies investigated ER elicitation techniques, five examined modeling techniques, and seven covered both. Illustrative case studies were the main evaluation method for proposed elicitation techniques. Identified limitations include time consumption and extensive human involvement. The dominant application domains were healthcare and well-being, and game development.

Conclusion

This review summarizes the current landscape of emotional requirements research, highlighting key elicitation and modeling techniques, evaluations, limitations, and domains. Further research can build on these findings to advance emotional requirements practices in software engineering. Future research may address (1) managing conflicting emotional requirements across users, (2) evaluating the value and impact of considering emotional requirements during the development and (3) Modeling and analyzing emotional requirements in relation to other requirements.

Technology adoption review for ageing well: analysis of technical solutions

While several technological solutions are available for older adults to improve their wellbeing and quality of life, little is known about the gaps between the needs, provided solutions, and their adoption from a more pragmatic perspective. This paper reports on reviewing existing technological solutions for older adults, which span the work life, life in the community, and wellbeing at home. We analyzed 50 different solutions to uncover both negative and positive features of these solutions from the perspective of the impact of technology adoption on the quality of life of older adults. Our approach harnesses holistic reasoning to determine the most suitable technologies available today and provides suggestions for improvement toward designing and implementing better solutions.

Stay cognitively and socially active with me: a six-month study of a socialization service

50% of older adults over 60 years old are experiencing social isolation. Assistive technology can provide solutions that promote the connection with their families and other stakeholders. In this context, this paper presents a pilot study of a socialization service with 3 functions tested by 10 older adults and 10 informal caregivers. After a short training, participants were requested to use the system in their daily life for six months. At the beginning (T0) and at the end (T6) of the trial, qualitative structured questionnaires were addressed to investigate training, usability, acceptance (i.e. trust, anxiety, facilitating condition, enjoyment, and attitude), and user experience. Collected results underline good training, good usability of the system (SUS>68), and user experience for both groups. Furthermore, the values associated with acceptance domains are higher than 3.5 for intention to use and trust, at the end of the tests. We can observe a decreasing trend in stress associated with technology use. Informal caregivers have a higher evaluation of the system novelty with respect to older adults. Overall, qualitative feedback collected remarked the good impression of this service among the study's participants. Finally, this study represents a promising starting point for better investigating technology-based services that can improve the quality of life of older people living alone providing them with tools that can decrease their social isolation.Clinical Relevance- The results suggest the potential use of this type of service for promoting socialization among older adults thus reducing their loneliness.

A Technology-Based Intervention to Support Older Adults in Living Independently: Protocol for a Cross-National Feasibility Pilot

Innovative technologies can support older adults with or without disabilities, allowing them to live independently in their environment whilst monitoring their health and safety conditions and thereby reducing the significant burden on caregivers, whether family or professional. This paper discusses the design of a study protocol to evaluate the acceptance, usability, and efficiency of the SAVE system, a custom-developed information technology-based elderly care system. The study will involve older adults (aged 65 or older), professional and lay caregivers, and care service decision-makers representing all types of users in a care service scenario. The SAVE environmental sensors, smartwatches, smartphones, and Web service application will be evaluated in people's homes situated in Romania, Italy, and Hungary with a total of 165 users of the three types (cares, elderly, and admin). The study design follows the mixed method approach, using standardized tests and questionnaires with open-ended questions and logging all the data for evaluation. The trial is registered to the platform ClinicalTrials.gov with the registration number NCT05626556. This protocol not only guides the participating countries but can be a feasibility protocol suitable for evaluating the usability and quality of similar systems.

Integration and Deployment of Cloud-Based Assistance System in Pharaon Large Scale Pilots—Experiences and Lessons Learned

The EU project Pharaon aims to support older European adults by integrating digital services, tools, interoperable open platforms, and devices. One of the objectives is to validate the integrated solutions in large-scale pilots. The integration of mature solutions and existing systems is one of the preconditions for the successful realization of the different aims of the pilots. One such solution is an intelligent, privacy-aware home-care assistance system, SmartHabits. After briefly introducing the Pharaon and SmartHabits, the authors propose different Pharaon models in the Ambient/Active Assisted Living (AAL) domain, namely the Pharaon conceptual model, Pharaon reference logical architecture view, AAL ecosystem model, meta AAL ecosystem model, and Pharaon ecosystem and governance models. Building on the proposed models, the authors provide details of the holistic integration and deployment process of the SmartHabits system into the Pharaon ecosystem. Both technical and supporting integration challenges and activities are discussed. Technical activities, including syntactic and semantic integration and securing the transfer of the Pharaon sensitive data, are among the priorities. Supporting activities include achieving legal and regulatory compliance, device procurement, and use-case co-designing in COVID-19 conditions.