This paper discusses technological opportunities for cognitive support, well-being, coping at home and quality of life for persons with memory problems. Examples are provided from two European AAL (Ambient Assistive Living) projects. Assistive technology (AT) can be applied to provide appropriate and personalized support to time-orientation, sensory awareness, communication and recreational activities (entertainment). Thus, boredom, loneliness and social isolation can be reduced. Loneliness, isolation and lack of daily social interaction are in fact well-known causes of difficulty with medication schedules and depression among the elderly and people with dementia. This, in turn, implies less healthy ageing.

Existing assistive living and prompting based solutions have adopted a relatively complex approach to supporting individuals. These solutions have involved sensor based monitoring, activity recognition and assistance provisioning. Traditionally they have suffered from a number of issues rooted in scalability and performance levels associated with the activity recognition process. This paper introduces a simplistic approach to assistive living within a user's residence through the use of NFC tags and smart devices. The core concept of this approach is presented and is subsequently placed within the context of related work. A description of the architecture is provided and results following technical evaluation of the first system prototype are discussed.

Taking active part in the self-serve society is required as long as possible. Information technology can be used to support this. However, little or no familiarity with information technology represents a major barrier. Another serious hindrance is low accessibility of user interfaces, i.e. solutions which fail to follow the principles of healthy and intuitive design. In this paper, we present design principles that can make an AAL self-service technology for elderly accessible. These principles form a set of guidelines that has been applied in the development of the assistive technology Mylife. Mylife aims to support independence for older people with reduced cognitive function by giving them access to simple and intuitive services that are adapted to their individual needs and wishes. Mylife uses services available on the Internet, such as calendar, photo album, music, news and communication, and presents them together on everyday devices with a touch screen. Mylife is flexible and can be gradually modified to follow the user’s cognitive development. Caregivers administer the setup, personalisation and content management of the Mylife product via a web-interface. The web-interface allows the caregiver (secondary end-user) to administer the setup of the primary end-users’ Mylife device, including personalisation and daily content management.

Most European governments offer electronic self-services to citizens and businesses on a 365/7/24-basis. e-Services are available. In addition to availability, e-Services also have to be accessible in order to be successful. A number of accessibility standards and design guidelines exist and are widely applied on websites offering e-Services. Increasingly, e-Services are designed to be carried out in “batches”, within time-slots that suit the end-user. This temporal dimension plays an essential role in accessibility of e-Services. In this paper, we present seven design guidelines that will add temporal accessibility to e-Services that are being used repeatedly, over time. These are: 1. Overview and general information. 2. Targeted and relevant information. 3. Safety and trust. 4. Support to multi-channel platform and “family resemblance”. 5. Logical process and progression. 6. Storage and retrieval of information. 7. Timeline. The design objective is that it must be easy for the user to find, learn, recognise and recall e-Services as well as use-related events and transactions connected to these. We show how existing design principles from established sets of guidelines support the implementation of these principles, and thus increase the temporal accessibility of e-Services.

The growth of internet access as well as the development of national strategies for e-Government, have had a remarkable impact on the information society. This progress has brought about a broad range of new issues and challenges, among these, those of interoperability of systems and services. One area, in which barriers are common, yet not fully understood, is organisational interoperability. In this paper we present results from empirical research exploring such obstacles in Norwegian public administration and government agencies. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews, and organised in ten categories of barriers to organisational interoperability. The results presented in this paper are aimed at deepening the understanding of organisational interoperability in e-Government. The identification of barriers is a first step for finding solutions to achieve interoperability goals.

Governments all around the world are taking quantum leaps towards the implementation of electronic self-services for citizens and businesses (eServices). Currently, most eServices are implemented as web-based solutions. Governmental and other eServices require careful accessibility design in order to be successful. Several accessibility standards and design guidelines exist and are widely applied on websites offering eServices. Time plays an essential role in the use of many eServices. In this paper we present a taxonomy and some examples of eServices according to the dimension of time. We propose seven design principles that will add accessibility to sustained eServices that are being used repeatedly and over time. These principles are: 1. Overview and general information. 2. Targeted and relevant information. 3. Safety and trust. 4. Support for multichannel platform and "family resemblance". 5. Logical process and progression. 6. Storage and retrieval of information. 7. Timeline. We show how existing design principles from established sets of guidelines support the implementation of these principles, and thus increase the accessibility of sustained eServices.

In this paper, we focus on ICTs for young people attending occupational rehabilitation and training. An important goal is to develop ICTs that decrease the need for reading and writing dramatically. The UNIMOD-prototype demonstrates how mobile phones can be used as the main and only ICT-device by truck drivers who deliver mats from the laundry to a large number of companies and public places. The mobile phone can be used in the truck for navigation according to traffic situation and geography, and for handling the customer and delivery information. The test sessions show that mobile phones offer an excellent point of departure for the development of simple and intuitive services that support users with cognitive declines.

Mobile devices and services are rapidly becoming a common property. In this paper, we describe what this development implies in terms of usability of complex services. Management of workflow in the context of interactive services is focussed on. It is shown how to implement workflow on mobile phones, and how to increase the usability of complex services by application of two main categories of design guidelines are presented: Navigation and work flow, and Input and error handling. Ditto user interface design is demonstrated through a concrete case, the 'mobile tax demonstrator', which provides functionality for up- dating information required for tax calculations and consequently for ordering a new tax deduction card.

European governments are taking quantum leaps towards the implementation of electronic self-services (eServices). Currently, most eServices are implemented as web-based solutions on PC-platform. The use of mobile technologies for eServices is lurking just behind the corner. The usability and accessibility of mobile eServices can be improved by the application of appropriate accessibility guidelines on the interaction design of mobile devices. This, in turn may have a great impact on the inclusion of large user groups in the information society, for example elderly and cognitively disabled people. In this paper, we show how to operationalize common accessibility guidelines for eServices on mobile phones, and thus how increase accessibility of mobile eServices. We present a synopsis of accessibility guidelines for eServices on mobile devices, and illustrate the application of these in the context of a data capture application within public eServices (the Mobile Tax Demonstrator).

The use of mobile technologies for self services, and the inclusion of elderly and cognitively disabled users in the self-service society can be improved by the application of appropriate accessibility guidelines for mobile devices. We show how to operationalize the principles of universal design, and how to realize these principles on mobile devices. Ten categories of accessibility guidelines are presented, and accessible user interfaces for an electronic service on a mobile phone are demonstrated.

Discusses the failure of end user computing (EUC) to achieve its objectives. Bases discussion on people, application and skill. Relates the problems to those of prototyping. Suggests some difficulties can be overcome by education. Presents an educational method consisting of five steps: interviews and observations, group discussions, lectures, simulation, and personal guidance.

Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) currently arouses plenty of interest. There is, anyhow, an evident tendency to regard CSCW-technologies (e.g. electronic mail, hyperdocument applications, calendar systems, and the like) as belonging to the office territory. This paper aims at illustrating some possibilities of utilizing CSCW-applications in an industrial setting (inventory management system). In other words, it is daimed that CSCW-technologies are relevant consequences of the use of these technologies. I also discuss how to avoid the creation of unnecessary applicational complexity in the case of employing CSCW-technologies.

The development of different help systems and the application of numerous approaches to user support have shown (a) that end-users may encounter insuperably complex use situations, and (b) that it is possible to assist users significantly by implementing computerized help systems. There are many approaches to the realization of user support, varying from the use of natural language to user modelling. However, the current help systems seem to focus on relatively technical data processing issues, ignoring the organizational context in which the use takes place. It is asserted in this paper that it is relevant for users to perceive the organizational context and that it is possible to reflect the context in a support system. Representing the context in a support system is made possible by introducing a context database. A context database is parallel to the actual database and contains information about task flows, task-connected information objects and the like. Therefore the analysis of work and information systems has to be based on related areas. The areas of inquiry are (a) tasks, (b) job design, (c) organization of work, (d) computer applications and (e) information media. The following kinds of mappings can be incorporated within the context database: [organizational unit Ol]-T_person PI in job]-[job task Tl]-[task-connected information Il]-[task-connected information 12]-[job task T2]-[person in job P2]-[organizational unit O2], This type of chain (or parts of it) can then be visualized as context support.

It is not unusual that a user gets lost when using a computer system. Supporting users in difficult situations is therefore very important independently of whether they are working with personal applications or with an integrated information system. User support can be approached in many ways. One possible way is to develop help systems for assisting the users. I claim, however, that most current approaches to help systems tend to focus on plain data and information processing issues leaving the organizational context in which the use takes place without attention. It is asserted in this paper that it is possible to reflect the context in a help system. An approach to representing the context in connection with a help system is made by introducing the idea of a context database. A context database is parallel to the actual database and it contains information about task flows, task-connected information objects, and the like. (The information objects themselves are stored in the actual database). In order to be able to realize a help system which takes the organizational context in account the analysis of work and information system has to focus on information processing tasks, information objects, and other entities which are needed for the context database. A proposal for how to perform such analysis enterprises is presented. The proposal introduces five groups of objects of analysis: tasks, organization of work, job design, computer applications, and information media.