Extended Television: A Study of How Investigations of Use Can Inform Design Processes in Nursing Homes

This paper describes the shortcomings in the support that replaces the lost distributed cognition in older people who move to nursing homes and how artifacts can improve this by functioning as distributed cognition. The 30 older persons in the study were men and women of different backgrounds and ages (between 60 and 100 years), all of whom had some kind of functional limitation. The observations and analysis were carried out as a part of the iterative design phase of TV functions for the older people, and the analysis was based on distributed cognition theory and the FACE conceptual design tool. Poorly designed artifacts resulted in the older person’s loss of control, and hindered the creation of distributed cognition. However, these aspects improved in the older persons’ TV watching when individually adapted assistive technology was used.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: PSYCHNOLOGY
• Authors: Peter Abdelmassih Waller
• Keywords: Distributed Cognition, Older People, Older Persons, PSYCHNOLOGY 2007