Excellence in Research: Human Factors Approach to Facilitate Ambient Assisted Living Accessible and Usable to People with Visual Impairments: Loneliness Self-Monitoring System

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Excellence in Research awards provide support for faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities to strengthen their research capacity. The award to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University has potential broader impact in a number of scientific and societal areas. The project will utilize a user-centered design methodology to conduct research that analyzes the unique gait characteristics of visually impaired individuals in the home, with consideration for the use of assistive devices or service dogs. This gait analysis and human factors research will facilitate an understanding of subjective factors, emotional status and aloneness for these visually impaired individuals. Finally, the research outcomes will support self monitoring such that the end users can be informed about the loneliness detection and assessment results through the use of accessible formats (e.g., voice user interfaces). This research benefits the visually impaired, supports educational opportunities for students and advances knowledge in the use of human centered design research to address unique needs of those individuals with disabilities. The project is an ergonomics/human factors study that utilizes health informatics and data analytics to focus on advancing knowledge, technology, and human factors engineering principles to accurately assess human behavioral data in a natural environment (i.e. the home). The focus is on analytical modules specifically designed for the inclusion of persons with disabilities (i.e. visual impairments). The project objectives include conducting a user-centered contextual inquiry in a natural environment, developing the data collection, analysis, and report modules for the system using an iterative user-centered design approach, and finally, assessing the validity, reliability, and usability of the proposed system in an individual's natural environment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.