The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people around the world to enter a more digital era. This left many elderly people struggling to cope with communicating with their loved ones online and spending hours in front of a screen in general. Due to the drastic change in their lives and physical restraints, people spend more time on their screens and technology has become vital in their everyday life. Therefore, it is time to introduce them to a new era of technology that will enhance their computing experience.
Our project is designed to be used in conjunction with MotionInput, which is UCL’s open-source software that detects gestures (motion) through a webcam and allows users to interact with the games and applications. It also includes another UCL-developed software, Ask-KITA, which detects speech through a microphone and converts it to text. By integrating MotionInput version 3 and Ask-KITA into our application, we will be giving our users a touchless computing experience.
Our primary stakeholders are Prof. Dean Mohamedally (UCL Computer Science Professor), Sinead Tattan (UCL), Sibghah Khan (UCL), John McNamara (IBM), Costas Stylianou, Pippa Chick (Intel), and Lee Stott (Microsoft).
Our additional advisory stakeholders include Dr. Atia Rafiq (atiarafiq@doctors.org.uk), Prof Joseph Connor (joseph.connor@ucl.ac.uk), Sheena Visram, Rakshita Kumar, Karunya Selvaratnam, Samuel Emilolorun, and Jeremy Ping (UCL).
After meeting with our client, we understood that our project, FISE Kiosk 2022, should be a touchless application aimed at care home users to allow them to perform various tasks. Some of these may include ordering food, reading books, exercising, communicating with their loved ones, and more. Additionally, we discussed the main functionalities that our application should have and put them into a MoSCoW requirement list for an easier prioritization of tasks and delegation of work.
Over the duration of this module, we scheduled regular meetings with our clients to show our progress, receive feedback, and re-arranged our MoSCow list of requirements. These meetings were crucial as they helped us to tweak and improve our application while keeping us focused on our main goal without disrupting our building process.
Provide internet services
Our application focused on providing services to care home users such as online shopping, playing games, communicating with family, and accessing help, as well as encouraging them to exercise while having fun.
Navigation by motion
Instead of using a mouse or any other pointing device, our application should have MotionInput integrated and the user’s hand position would be detected over the screen from a webcam to determine where exactly the cursor should be. This is to overcome the physical restraints of users in the care home.
Text-to-speech
Although we already have touchless computing because of MotionInput, it would be tedious for users to use their hand and wave it all around to hit the keys at different positions, especially while typing through the on-screen keyboard. Instead, the user can simply use Ask-KITA to dictate and the software would transcribe their speech into text. This could be used in many places, such as messaging the carers.
Fullscreen on a TV screen
Since many users in the care home would not have access to a personal device, the application should run on television with Intel NUC, a low-power PC. It should be full screen since the users would not be exiting the application.
We conducted interviews with 4 pseudo users who represent either elderly or differently-abled people and one elderly person to understand our user’s goals and limitations. Here is a table that summarises the questions and their answers:
We created personas for two people, an elderly and a differently-abled person.
This helped us to further understand our users' requirements and challenges.
Edith Joans- Elderly Person
Description:
Edith is a 70-year-old woman who used to be a cashier in a small town in Manchester. Since her retirement, she has been staying at the Lowel Street Care Home. It has been 5 years at this facility. She spends most of her day knitting and talking to her friends at the care home.
Before the pandemic, Edith’s daughter and grandchildren used to come to visit her every alternate Saturday and spend the afternoon in the garden with her. They used to take a little picnic basket that Edith packed with all her and her grandchildren’s favourite snacks. Now, Edith spends Saturday afternoons in her room knitting.
By using our application, Edith can video call her daughter and spend time with her and the grandchildren. She could also change her background to a green view giving it a more garden feel. She can also munch on her favourite snacks while watching her grandchildren munching on theirs. Although they are not physically present together, they laugh and talk like they are.
John Smith- Differently-abled Person
Description:
John is a 17-year-old boy from London who studies at Greenmount High School. He was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was 3 years old. John enjoys playing games such as Minecraft and is pretty good at playing some instruments including the piano.
Before the pandemic, John used to look forward to his weekends with his parents since they used to take him to the local library where he could borrow books for the following weekend. He would also meet his friends that were his neighbours and play Minecraft with them. Now, John spends his days coping with the sudden change that the pandemic has brought upon him.
By using our application, John can browse books online and start reading them. He could also play games that would lead him to have fun while exercising too. Additionally, he can also use Ask-Kia to call his friends and talk to them.
We created use cases diagrams and lists to have a better visual of to design the structure our application and clearly outline its requirements.
Once we talked to the client, we decided on a list of requirements and prioritized it using a MoSCoW (must have, should have, could have, would have) list. This helped us to delegate tasks amongst ourselves.
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