To meet the demand of the heterogeneous group of older persons in Europe and to support their ageing in place, researchers and developers need to precisely design products and services which would be successfully used by their end-users. Hence, the persona method is key in developing user centred approach technologies.
This study introduces the development of 4 new European personas, which are often overlooked by the current studies while their presence is a reality and their frequency is increasing: the retirement migrant, the hyphenated identity of being both an older adult and unprofessional informal carer (often for a parent or a spouse), the ex-caremigrant and the undocumented migrant. Often the identities of an older adult range on a continuum from being a caregiver to becoming a care-receiver and we need to account for that. These findings aim to support researchers and developers in being more precise when constructing their target users of new technologies for aging in the place. The innovativeness of the study is emphasized in increasing the representativeness of the European older adults’ personas and (their) unprofessional caregivers.
This work was performed in the frame of the EU project “iCan – ICTbased assistant for everyday life”, funded by the AAL Programme, co-funded by the European Commission and the National Funding Authorities of Cyprus, Spain and Romania.
For more information, you can find the Abstract in the following link.