Promoting social connectedness through human activity-based ambient displays

Existing research in ambient assisted living (AAL) confinns the success of context aware applications in conveying feelings of connectedness and creating a sense of co-presence. Awareness of an elder's activities could trigger emotional responses and reveal pertinent information concerning their health, moods and habits. This paper presents a bidirectional ambient display platform, enabling asynchronous viewing of activity levels to create awareness and enhance social connectedness. An automatic smartphone based human activity recognition (HAR) system reveals activities of the elderly and caregivers in their daily lives. The results suggest that perception of activity levels is useful for fostering social connectedness and strengthening engagement between caregivers and their elderly counterparts. These findings may help interaction designers tailor AAL solutions for increased social interaction and context awareness.