Augmenting Everyday Artefacts to Support Social Interaction Among Senior Peers

Novel technological possibilities emerge when tangible and
social computing come together. This paper explores the
potential of such technology when designing for seniors and
their social interaction. Our research is guided by the concept
of twitterIDo, which is to make seniors’ everyday activities
more visible by augmenting everyday artefacts to
communicate the ongoing activity they are used for. We engaged
a local community of seniors in a living lab to explore
the possibilities of twitterIDo in real life situations. This
paper presents a series of interactive prototypes of everyday
artefacts and displays designed to start a dialogue with the
seniors on how twitterIDo-technology may fit into their everyday
situations. Our findings point out how augmented
everyday artefacts can make a positive difference when designing
technology in a domain such the one of seniors’ and
their social interaction. Presenting our experience we want
to exemplify and open up new directions for designing t