Designing a user-centred ICT platform for active aging

Nowadays Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies can be successfully applied to create assistive systems able to support frail and elderly people and promote active aging. Indeed, objects are ready and matured enough to be applied at low cost and can exchange information each other by proper communication protocols available on the market. However, there are still some open issues limiting the diffusion of such technologies and their effective introduction in people everyday life. Limitations mainly refer to three aspects: low system usability, poor acceptance by users, and lack of personalization and flexibility. The first two issues directly derive from the technology-oriented approach adopted in designing such systems, which does not consider the users´ needs. The third issue is mainly due to the adoption of standard protocols that allow communication only among a set of compliant devices. The present research proposes a new model to design an AAL system to support active aging by adopting a user-centred approach to define an interoperable architecture integrating different types of Smart Object. The result is a high usable and flexible platform that allows creating user-friendly products as well as services and realizing also high-level functions by integrating data from completely different contexts. The research case study specifically addresses elderly people needs living alone or affected by chronic disease, which require a continuous control and feedback.