ShareComp: sharing for companionship.

We describe our process, findings, and resulting solution for the CHI2005 Student Competition. The design problem was the issue of well-being of persons above the age of 65 years. Loss of a companion can be a primary cause of depression, and decline of social well-being and health for the elderly, so the challenge is to design for "artificial" companionship to support the elderly. We met this challenge by employing extensive research in geriatric psychology, empirical and analytical human-computer interaction methods, interaction design techniques, and technologies currently available or in development. Our solution is a wearable and stationary device that will allow the user to 1) record events through pictures and audio for sharing, 2) gather artifacts of their past such as photographs into a multimedia slideshow format for sharing with others, and 3) allow friends and family to be aware of the user's location for safety purposes.