pedro santana
Electronic Family Newspaper
Supporting Emotional Ties among Mexican Elders and Their Families Living Abroad.
| when | aug 04 - oct 05 | |
| where | cicese research center, uabc university | |
| why | m.eng. project | |
| web | http://www.pecesama.net/thesis/ | |
| pubs | chi 2005 | |
| mgmt | marcela rodríguez and jesús favela |
The aged of the population is a phenomenon that is facing many nations, such as Mexico, in which 7.5% of the population is greater than 60 years old. The current estimation for the 2030 is that it will reach a 17.5%. Among those elders, 10% of them live alone with no close family members around them. This condition is more likely to occur in some regions of Mexico as it is related with the ever increasing migration of one or more of their family's members to USA. The scenario for those elders can be quite complex as they often face the impossibility of visiting or being visited by their families as they lack of proper documentation (VISAS or residency permits).
Our work involves to strength the social family networks and context aware ubiquitous computing to provide a technological solution focusing on elder people living alone in Mexico and their families abroad. To understand the challenges and circumstances around living alone for an elder person in this situation, we conducted interviews with a group of them. Those interviews served to inform our design of a system that eases the isolation of these people.
With the Electronic Family Newspaper project, we envisioned a communication tool in the form of a family newspaper through which seniors and their relatives not only maintain close social ties by sharing information, personal reminiscences and cultural stories, but enable them to exercise their minds through its entertainment section, as it has been found that elders experience a cognitive decline as they become older.