to identify and sustain conversation topics of common interest. In face-to-face interactions, this challenge is commonly resolved by engaging in a shared activity, such as playing a game, collaborating on a project, or even watching a TV program. Unfortunately, current communication technologies, such as the telephone and email, do not readily support these kinds of activities. We are beginning to explore the design of shared online activities, especially around the theme of family history.

 

• Figure 2. The Families in Touch picture frame concept sketch.

May + June 2012

interactions

The Need for Esteem

The desire for independence develops at a young age and lasts a lifetime. Some of our projects focus on keeping older adults autonomous, and on empowering them to communicate for themselves, when aging, stroke, brain injury, or other impairments have made language problematic. Other projects seek to help seniors keep emotionally, mentally, and physically fit, in spite of cognitive or physical challenges and decline.

For example, Kent Fenwick developed a context-aware app called Friend Forecaster that employs information about one’s social network to provide reminders of the names of people one might plausibly encounter in a particular location [ 11]. Following on from this project, we (led by Alex Levy and Aakash Sahney) have commercialized a context-aware cellphone app originally called Marco Polo and now called MyVoice (see http://myvoiceaac.com/) that uses location to suggest useful words and phrases to individuals with anomic aphasia, which often results from stroke, or to children with communication challenges.

We have also created two prototypes of an accessible large-