Coaching older adults: Persuasive and multimodal approaches to coaching for daily living

Abstract

In this work, we present our approach to designing a multimodal, persuasive system for coaching older adults in four domains of daily living: activity, mobility, sleep, social interaction. Our design choices were informed by considerations related to the deployment of the system in four pilot sites and three countries: Austria, Bulgaria and Slovenia. In particular, we needed to keep the system affordable, and design across divides such as urban-rural and high-low technological affinity. We present these considerations, together with our approach to coaching through text, audio, light and color, and with the participation of the users' social circles and caregivers. We conducted two workshops and found preference for voice and text. Participants in Bulgaria also showed a preference for music-based rendering of coaching actions.