Creating salient summaries of home activity lifelog data.

Keeping track of the fluctuations in functional abilities that elders experience is important for early detection of cognitive decline and maintaining independence. In this proposal, I describe my research in understanding how to design ubiquitous home sensor systems that can monitor how well individuals carry out everyday activities important for independence. These systems collect an overwhelmingly large amount of data and thus only the most salient details need to be presented. I will identify the information needs of stakeholders to inform the design of salient summaries of the data for elders, their family caregivers, their doctors, and their therapists to become more aware of changes functional abilities. I also describe the technical, HCI, and clinical contributions of this work.