Expand Your Comfort Zone! Smart Urban Objects To Promote Safety In Public Spaces For Older Adults

Urban areas and demography are changing, leading to an acceleration of life pace and an ageing population at the same time. In order to ensure safe mobility in urban areas for older adults, we aim to increase awareness for own abilities, potential assistance by peers and pedestrians, as well as awareness for emerging needs of older adults by implementing smart urban objects in public space. Based on research approaches on awareness in HCI, we present an example scenario of expanding older adult's comfort zones with smart urban objects and discuss potential challenges and future work in the funded project UrbanLife+.