Improving User Engagement And Social Participation Of Elderly People Through A Tv And Tablet-Based Communication And Entertainment Platform

Maintaining healthy relationships and companionship are major challenges to prevent potentially harmful effects of loneliness and social isolation in older age. Therefore, to foster participation and user engagement of elderly people in online communication and entertainment the user experience of devices and services need to be improved substantially. This paper discusses a participatory design approach to design and implement a TV and tablet-based communications and entertainment platform called BRELOMATE. The results of a field study with 30 elderly people over five months shows that each users was online for 37.0 h and played the card game service for 23.3 h on average over the course of 8weeks.