Collaboration and Coordination in the Context of Informal Care Programme Committee

The proceedings list the papers accepted for presentation in the workshop and the abstract of the opening keynote. CCCiC 2014 is the first edition of a series of workshops organised by the academic members of TOPIC (The Online Platform for Informal Carers), a European project that aims to advance the understanding of the daily practices of informal carers and to design information and communication technologies to lower their burden, funded by the AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) Joint Program. Studies on issues of informal care suggest that further research in the area is needed to better understand its demands and to figure out more effective ways for technologies to support people who deal with them. These studies recurrently stress that care work is often demanding and that the results of these demands are different types of burden (e.g. psychological, physical, and emotional), which can be higher or lower depending on variables like the age, gender, and type of illness of the person receiving care. Therefore, the workshop invited contributions on issues of design and development of systems to support coordination and foster communication and collaboration between informal carers and their friends, family members, and health professionals, aiming at relieving the aforementioned burdens stemming from informal care activities. This includes but is not limited to systems such as: integrated social support platforms to serve all relevant aspects of carers' needs through adequate products and services; accessible (mobile, tactile) ICT applications to automate tasks of general caregiving when suitable; and social media for social support, such as online communities with special focus on social support for the elderly. Acknowledging the relevance of understanding the users' context to be able to design up-to-date, useful and usable solutions, the workshop focused on research following user-centred and participatory design approaches, valuing the development of sustainable technologies and taking into account relevant ethical issues in terms of the use of ICTs for informal care. The contributions featured in the proceedings have been peer-reviewed by the members of the workshop Program Committee and selected on the basis of their quality, compliance with the workshop theme, and the extent (and diversity) of their backgrounds in design. They express points of view of researchers from both academia and industry and provide relevant insights in the design and development of technologies for informal care.