Elderly Users in Ambient Intelligence: Does an Avatar Improve the Interaction?

In order to examine the effect of an avatar in natural interaction with elderly users in ambient intelligent environments, we performed an empirical study with elderly people (normal aging, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's patients) not only on subjective but also on objective measures. The data supports the following: 1) The subjects followed some instructions much better when interacting with the avatar. 2) The presence of the avatar has neither any positive nor negative effect on the recall of elderly people and it has a positive effect only on the subjective measures. 3) We found that elderly people both with and without cognitive impairment are capable of recognizing emotions in the facial expressions of the avatar and 4) they found the experience of having an emotional avatar in the interface a pleasant one. Thus, we conclude that virtual characters could improve the interaction between elderly people and machines, but this would depend greatly on the request task.