TV as an experience conveyer for better acceptance of ICT services by older adults

In today’s society, the average age of the population is constantly increasing, together with the need to assist them through specific social services. Information technologies can be exploited to help monitoring pathologies in long-term care programs and can offer very useful tools to empower social inclusion and independent living. However, such tools should be carefully designed in order to be easily accepted by that part of population that is not familiar with digital technologies. Focusing on the challenge of providing ICT services through easier forms of interaction, this paper proposes a new e-service provisioning model that adopts a “hidden” computer as a flexible platform to provide social e-services. It adopts the TV as the most familiar interface for info-marginalized audiences, with a set of input/output devices to ease the interaction. Two platforms, specifically a TV box and an all-in-one touchscreen, have been implemented and evaluated with older adults, retrieving their opinions and feedback. Results show that the proposed solutions help to decrease the usual reluctance of seniors with respect to ICT, thanks to more familiar and easier forms of interaction able to reduce the digital gap toward new communications paradigm.