TwitterIDo: What if my shopping bag could tell my friends I’m out shopping

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the use of augmented everyday artefacts to make seniors’ everyday activities more visible in local communities to strengthen existing face-to-face social interactions or open new ones. We ground the twitterIDo idea in a three-year research project. We involved seniors as co-designers and we explored twitterIDo in a living lab with a community of senior citizens. Through a set of interactive prototypes of augmented everyday artefacts and dedicated displays, we engaged senior co-designers in in-situ enactments and workshops. Experiencing the possibilities of our idea, the seniors envisioned the use of the interactive prototypes to support their collaboration in shopping activities. We reflect on how promoting social interaction by making everyday activities more visible became instrumental to support collaboration, offering the seniors a clear purpose to make their shopping activities more visible.