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Virtual assistance
New film asks if smart home tech enriches older people ’ s lives .
Sarah Pink interviewed by Eleanor Campbell
During the first year of COVID-19 , researchers installed smart home technologies into the households of older people to observe how digital devices impacted their lives .
Smart Homes for Seniors , directed by Professor Sarah Pink , captured this journey through the eyes of 11 of the study ’ s participants from their homes in regional NSW .
The documentary film follows the group as they and their pets learn to live with smart lights and kettles , digital voice assistants and robotic vacuum cleaners . The film was recently screened for international audiences and was selected for the 2021 Awareness Film Festival in Los Angeles .
The 30-minute documentary was the final result of the Intelligent Home Solutions
Project .
The research brought provider McLean Care into a partnership with specialist researchers from Monash University ’ s
Emerging Technologies Research Lab , and Deakin University ’ s CADET Virtual Reality Training and Simulation Research Lab .
Pink , who is the director of Monash ’ s Emerging Technologies Research Lab , says we need to “ think about seniors and their independence in a range of different ways ”.
“ One of those is about respecting their expertise and knowledge and ability to advise and care for others , and to think how smart home technologies can assist them in continuing those roles .”
Pink joined Campus Review to chat about Smart Homes for Seniors .
CR : Can you tell us about the households you filmed , and the people in them ? SP : They came from a range of different socioeconomic groups and from diverse backgrounds as well . It ’ s very important for us to understand how people from different groups would engage with and use the smart home technology .
Some of the older people were living alone , some were living in couples , some had other family members who stayed in their homes sometimes . Quite a few of them had pets , which is also really important to the way in which they use the smart home technologies .
They were all living in rural regional locations , so they weren ’ t city dwellers .
Had they experienced these kinds of technologies before ? To my knowledge , the participants hadn ’ t been using the Google voice assistance and those kinds of technologies , although some of them may have had some experience of them . Some had used the robotic vacuum cleaners before with varying degrees of success . I think that ’ s a technology that potentially has been more widespread , and particularly more widespread amongst people who might find it harder to vacuum their homes themselves .
How did they feel about having these technologies in their home ? As one of the participants says in the film , it was quite overwhelming when the technical crew arrived with all of these technologies and installed them in their homes . But that , of course , varied amongst different participants . Some were quite digitally literate , and had been working and using digital technologies before they retired so they understood them to a much higher degree .
I think anybody is going to have to go through a quite intense learning process so you can actually understand how they work and how to best benefit from them . And also , how they might participate in your everyday life activities and how you personally want to use them .
As time went on , how did you see the technology become part of people ’ s everyday lives and routines ? Over time people started to use the Google voice assistant , for example , to wake them up in the morning . They would ask it questions . In the beginning , they experimented much more , and then they gradually found the things that they would like to use it for and for which it would be useful .
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