Assessment of Expectations and Needs of a Sensor Network to Promote Elderly’s Sense of Safety and Security

Many new technologies claiming to support independent living and prolonged possibilities of aging in place have been developed. To support independent living and increase the sense of safety and security both for the elderly themselves and for their relatives, the technologies have to be easily adaptable to match the divergent users personal expectations and needs. The study reported in this paper was conducted as seven case studies where a sensor network was deployed in homes of people with a self-perceived memory decline. We describe problems related to adaptive personalization of such technology in real settings and discuss what consequences these problems may have for the elderly people’s and their relatives willingness to use the technology. Our results indicate that a lack of sufficient possibilities to adaptive personalization of the system makes it difficult to address individual user’s expectations and needs. This, in turn, leads to a decreased trustworthiness of the technology and a risk of unwillingness to use the technology. Keywords–Ambient Assisted Living; Adaptive Personalization; Safety; User Expectations.