MultiMemoHome: Multimodal Reminders Within the Home

提醒应用程序向用户提供警报、警告和其他与上下文相关的信息。对于飞机驾驶舱[5,6]和医院等工作场所的警报器和警示器的设计，已经有了大量的研究。这项工作已被提炼成指导方针，列出了有效警报所需的许多功能。然而，家庭是一个与工作场所截然不同的互动空间。家庭用户不是训练有素的专家，任务控制得不那么严格，而且有许多微妙的社会方面与那些正式的环境非常不同。这些挑战在家庭护理应用中尤为突出，在这些应用中，提醒可能非常重要（例如药物提醒），也可能非常敏感（例如如厕）。因此，许多现有的指导方针并不适用于家庭护理环境。基本的HCI研究需要帮助设计师为这个关键环境创建有效的提醒。家里的提醒有很多用途，从提醒吃药，到日历、事件和约会提醒。以前关于提醒系统的大部分工作都集中在诸如在最方便的时间安排提醒和确保提醒系统的基础设施快速、可靠和安全等方面。然而，现有的研究并没有充分解决三个关键问题：感觉障碍、社会环境和用户偏好。家庭护理系统的使用者更有可能有一种或多种感官障碍，如视力或听力丧失。由于缺乏适合这一用户群体的商业提醒解决方案，许多人不得不依靠朋友、家人或自动药丸分配器和烹饪计时器等技术。让提醒通过不同的方式访问是至关重要的，以确保用户能够收到提醒，尽管他们的障碍。例如，如果用户有中度听力损失，标准的听觉警报可以通过嗅觉警报来加强。虽然家庭作为一个互动空间的复杂社会环境影响着提醒的设计和呈现，但这一点很少受到关注。目前，提醒是在没有意识到社交环境的情况下呈现的，经常导致提醒被关闭，以避免烦恼或尴尬。相反，系统应该能够以一种更微妙的方式呈现敏感的提醒。例如，当访客在场时，如厕提醒可以通过皮肤振动或非语音的方式发出，只有预定的接收者才能解码。最后，传统的提醒并不总是充分考虑到用户的偏好。在当前的商业产品中，提醒类型的范围通常是有限的（重点是听觉警报），在它们之间轻松切换的能力也是有限的。如果用户因为提醒令人讨厌而关闭提醒系统，那么提醒系统将是无效的。允许用户使用另一种方式根据自己的喜好调整提醒，将使它们更容易被接受。随着人口老龄化的增加，以及促进家庭护理自我管理的努力，对可配置的多模式提醒系统的需求日益增加，这些系统可以支持人们在自己家中独立生活更长时间。有许多潜在的利益相关者可能希望在提醒器的配置中输入信息，例如，最终用户、护理人员、家庭、制造商以及卫生和社会护理专业人员。提供支持配置的工具对于创建所有相关人员都可以接受的提醒非常重要。这个项目的关键研究问题是：我们如何为家庭设计有效的、适应性强的、可接受的和可访问的提醒系统？

Reminder applications deliver alarms, warnings, and other contextually relevant information to users. There is already a significant body of research on the design of alarms and warnings for workplaces such as aircraft cockpits [5, 6] and hospitals [7]. This work has been dis-tilled into guidelines that lay out many of the features required for effective alarms. However, the home is a very different interaction space to the workplace [8]. Home users are not highly trained experts, tasks are much less tightly controlled and there are many subtle social aspects that are very different to those formalised contexts. These challenges are particularly prominent in home care applications, where reminders can be both vitally important (e.g. medication reminders) and sensi-tive (e.g. toileting). Therefore, many existing guidelines are not applicable in home care settings. Basic HCI re-search is needed to help designers create effective re-minders for this key environment.There are many uses for reminders in the home, from reminders to take medication, to calendar, event and appointment reminders. Most previous work on reminder systems has focused on aspects such as sched-uling the reminders at the most convenient time [9] and ensuring that the infrastructure of the reminder system is fast, reliable, and secure [10]. However, the existing research does not adequately address the three key is-sues of sensory impairment, social context and user preference. Users of home care systems are far more likely to have one or more sensory impairments, such as sight or hearing loss. Due to a lack of appropriate com-mercially available reminder solutions for this user group, many have to rely on friends, family or technologies such as automatic pill dispensers and cooking timers. Making reminders accessible via different modalities is crucial to ensure users will be able to receive the reminder despite their impairments. For example, if a user has moderate hearing loss, standard auditory alarms could be reinforced by olfactory alarms. Although the complex social context of the home as an interaction space impacts the design and presentation of reminders, this has received little attention. Currently, reminders are presented with no awareness of the social setting, often resulting in reminders being switched off to avoid annoyance or embarrassment. Instead, systems should be able to present sensitive reminders in a more subtle way. For example, when visitors are present, toileting reminders could be given as vibration to the skin or a non-speech sound that only the intended recipient can decode. Finally, traditional reminders do not always fully take into account user preferences. In current commercial products the range of reminder types is often limited (with a focus on auditory alarms), as is the ability to easily switch between them. A reminder system will be inef-fective if the user switches it off because the reminders are annoying. Allowing users to adapt the reminders to their own preferences using an alternative modality would make them more acceptable. With an increase in the ageing population, and a drive to promote self management of care in the home [11], there is an increased need for configurable multimodal reminder systems that can support people staying in their own homes independently for longer. There are many potential stakeholders who might want to have input into the configuration of the reminders, for example, end users, carers, family, manufacturers and health and social care professionals. Providing tools to support configuration is important to allow the creation of re-minders that will be acceptable to all involved.The key research question in this project is: How can we design reminder systems for the home that are effective, adaptable, acceptable and accessible to users?