Title
Making Communication Frequency Tangible: How Green Is My Tree?
Abstract
Informal caregivers take care of someone (usually a close family member) who suffers from a chronic illness. In this stressful situation, caregivers have a high risk of depression or loneliness, because their social network is weakened. Most existing proposals focus on helping caregivers fulfill caregiving tasks, instead of providing support for their mental wellbeing (e.g. identifying early stages of social isolation). We present a prototype ambient interface, called EmoTree, that makes communication frequency tangible by using a metaphor of a tree, and investigate user perception and motivation of use. People found Emotree to be interesting and enjoyable (78%), and useful (54%) unless the user does not suffer some type of problem (69%). Our preliminary results show the interface is easy to use and has an adequate representation of communication frequency. Our next step will make a second assessment with informal caregivers in their real context.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1145/2839462.2856528
Tangible and Embedded Interaction
Keywords
Field
DocType
Tangible interfaces, communication frequency, informal caregivers
Social network,Social isolation,Computer science,Human–computer interaction,Perception,Metaphor,Green is,Loneliness
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
7
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Carolina Fuentes1195.32
Iyubanit Rodriguez2124.54
Valeria Herskovic322423.12