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Designing Auditory Reminders that Older People can Remember
The document discusses the design of auditory reminders for older individuals, emphasizing the need for co-design with users to enhance memory support. It highlights various aspects of cognitive ability that affect the effectiveness of reminders, such as perception, understanding, and context, and suggests diverse auditory options to accommodate different user preferences. Ultimately, the document advocates for reminders that are clear, familiar, and tailored to individual needs, particularly through the use of synthetic speech.
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Designing Auditory Reminders that Older People can Remember
- 1. DESIGNING AUDITORY REMINDERS THATOLDER PEOPLE CAN REMEMBER MARIA WOLTERS UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH @MARIAWOLTERS (WITH COLLABORATORS FROM UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH, GLASGOW, AND STRATHCLYDE AND QUEEN MARGARET UNIVERSITY)
- 2. THE PROBLEM: FORGETTING ▸Our ability to remember to do things (prospective memory) declines with age ▸ Reminders help, but only if they can be understood ▸ However, perceptual abilities also decline due to ▸ age ▸ work history ▸ illness ▸ … MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 3. WHY NOT JUSTUSE PICTURES? ▸ Alternative modalities (touch, vision) decline as well ▸ People have strong modality preferences that are independent of their actual ability (McGee-Lennon, Wolters, and Brewster, 2011) ▸ Visual reminders require people to be where they can see; tactile reminders require people to have something on them MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 4. MARIA WOLTERS, BAACONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS WHAT IS THE SOLUTION? ▸ Empower people to support their own memory! ▸ We need to: ▸ Co-design with people ▸ Focus on ability ▸ Provide diverse options
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- 6. WHAT DOES CO-DESIGNMEAN? ▸ We develop the solution together with the people who will use it ▸ People know what works for them (metamemory: knowledge about one’s memory abilities) ▸ If they don’t like it, if it’s stigmatising, or if it threatens their identity, they won’t use it. MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 7. HABITS AND CONTEXT ▸Routines and environments are powerful cues (McGee-Lennon, Wolters, and Brewster, 2011; Stawarz et al, 2014; Wolters 2014) ▸ Reminders work best when they build on habits and context cues ▸ In fact, when tested in real life, older people can remember to do things as well as younger people … (Rendell and Craik, 2000) MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
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- 9. ASPECTS OF ABILITY ▸For a successful auditory reminder, people need to ▸ perceive (can hear all aspects of the signal required for identification) ▸ understand (what needs to be done) ▸ act (even after distraction) ▸ Parallel tasks (cooking, reading, walking) may be additional distractor MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 10. RELEVANT DIMENSIONS OFCOGNITIVE ABILITY ▸ Information processing speed How quickly can new information be analyzed and integrated? ▸ Working memory short term storage for information processing ▸ Metamemory what do I find difficult to remember? ▸ Fluid intelligence, e.g. reasoning, planning Making sense of a message, making plans ▸ Crystallised intelligence, e.g., semantic memory what do the words mean? MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 11. EXAMPLE: MEDICATION REMINDERS ▸For medication reminders, it’s best to use actual names (too much difference in appearance for generics) ▸ Older people can’t recognise sequences of four medication names if they’ve been distracted after hearing them (Wolters et al, 2015), even if ▸ all they need to do is pick out their names from a list ▸ their function was explained (and function is given on list) ▸ Reminders for morning pills or afternoon pills would work much better MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
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- 13. MANY KINDS OFAUDITORY REMINDERS ▸ Speech ▸ Spearcons (speeded up speech) ▸ Earcons (abstract melodies) ▸ Auditory Icons (mimics relevant sounds) ▸ Musicons (short snippets of music) ▸ Beeps ▸ Ringtones MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 14. MANY KINDS OF(COMPUTER) SPEECH ▸ Look for an acceptable vocal personality ▸ People find an accent to which they are accustomed easier to understand - don’t trust popularity surveys! ▸ Clear articulation, maybe even Lombard speech, which is recorded while speaker hears noise ▸ Use pauses and emphasis to highlight information ▸ Let the person who will hear the reminders choose the voice, not their carer MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 15. THE POWER OFSYNTHETIC SPEECH ▸ Synthetic speech has become far more intelligible, even in noise ▸ Disadvantages: ▸ can sound like a computer ▸ Advantages: ▸ incredibly flexible - you can teach it any word ▸ easy to switch accents and speakers ▸ easy to personalize messages ▸ inexpensive MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
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- 17. WORKING WITH PATIENTS ▸Likely to look at reminders when you have the luxury of a little aural rehabilitation work. ▸ People are experts on themselves - listen actively ▸ Questionnaires, worksheets, online & offline material help - ask how they prefer their information ▸ Ideal for working across services (if your work setting allows). Some solutions require additional support (e.g., pharmacist dispensing pills in box by time of day) MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 18. WORKING WITH TECHNOLOGY ▸New „tech-savvy“ generations are a red herring - just imagine the innovations the current older people have seen in their lifetime! ▸ Stay with the familiar and non-stigmatising. Think ▸ cooker alarms ▸ simple mobile phones with reminder functions ▸ technology that does not look medical ▸ delivery through hearing aids (if worn reliably) MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
- 19. MARIA WOLTERS, BAACONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS ▸ Summary: Auditory reminders can work well, if they are designed to be clear and familiar. Computer-generated speech is an easy and inexpensive option, but be particularly careful with reminder design. ▸ Questions? Maria Wolters, mariawolters.wordpress.com @mariawolters, maria.wolters@ed.ac.uk
- 20. REFERENCES ▸ Rendell, P.G., & Craik, F. I. M. (2000). Virtual week and actual week: Age-related differences in prospective memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14, S43–S62. ▸ McGee-Lennon, M. R., Wolters, M. K., & Brewster, S. (2011). User-Centred Multimodal Reminders for Assistive Living. In CHI ’11: Proceedings of the 29th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. ▸ Stawarz, K., Cox, A. L., & Blandford, A. (2014). Don’t forget your pill! In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’14 (pp. 2269–2278). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557079 ▸ Wolters, M. K. (2014). The minimal effective dose of reminder technology. In Proceedings of the extended abstracts of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA ’14 (pp. 771–780). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2578878 ▸ Wolters, M. K., Johnson, C., Campbell, P. E., DePlacido, C. G., & McKinstry, B. (2014). Can older people remember medication reminders presented using synthetic speech? Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 22(1), 35–42. http://doi.org/10.1136/amiajnl-2014-002820 MARIA WOLTERS, BAA CONFERENCE 2015 @MARIAWOLTERS
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