R2S: A public augmented printed media system to promote care home residents' social interaction

Abstract

Institutional care settings are often described as places where residents suffer from social isolation. In the past decades, conventional social interventions changed very little and had many limitations. Our research explores the potential of integrating technologies into public caring environments. In this paper, we present "R2S", a flexible platform in care homes to support residents' social interaction through augmenting public print media products. It aims to provide caregivers a convenient way to transform any print media into interactive surfaces, which can enhance residents' public reading experience and trigger communications. This paper describes the design motivation, the design and prototype implementation, preliminary user feedback and future plans.