Kai Kang, Jun Hu, Bart Hengeveld, Caroline Hummels
Abstract
Social interaction between care home residents was found to be limited and positive peer relationships were difficult to establish. Our research explores the potential of designing socio-technical interventions through digitally augmenting residents’ daily activities in public spaces. In this paper, we present ‘R2S’, a system aiming to support residents’ social interaction by augmenting public print media in care homes. We describe the design motivations, design process and a user trial of R2S. The result indicates a promising design direction to create shared experiences by augmenting individual behaviors in care homes. Implications are also discussed in three levels to inform future design of social technologies in public caring environments