Understanding Socio-technical Opportunities for Enhancing Communication Between Older Adults and their Remote Family

Abstract

With the digitalization and mobilization of the society, older people face the challenge of maintaining high-quality communication with their younger family members who move out and lead separate lives at a distance. In HCI, little work is done to understand the social dynamics between distributed families and their remote communication mediated by the technologies. To identify design opportunities to support their remote communication, we conducted interviews with nine family pairs composed of distributed intergenerational family members. In addition, we interviewed eight community volunteers to formulate a perspective of social service providers. Our paper contributes to the HCI community by providing an account of the social dynamics mediated by communication technologies between older adults and their remote families, and opportunities to promote their social connections from a multi-stakeholder perspective. This paper presents valuable insights for designers aiming to enhance wellbeing of older adults within the context of distributed families.

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