Alexa, Send a Hug: TV and Virtual Assistants to Empower Older Adults and Stimulate Intergenerational Connections

As is widely known, the world’s population is aging, emphasizing the need to integrate older adults into society through the development of specific digital solutions. Within this context, researchers should explore technologies that can help alleviate feelings of loneliness and address social isolation indicators. In addition, if these demographic lacks familiarity with recent technology resources, the exclusion will not stop escalating significantly. This is the scenario that guides this work, which consists of describing the process of creating a prototype aimed at sending (in a proactive way) personalized notifications to the TV-set, that can be easily answered via a combined voice assistant. These notifications have the potential to encourage older adults to contact their families and/or friends, mitigating the usual complexity of these interactions by doing it using only their voice. This paper describes all the process stages, from the initial interviews and technologies involved, to the preparation for the field tests. Additionally, it provides insights from six tests carried out with elderly people aged between 70 and 89 in a real-life context. This experiment demonstrated the potential of proactive notifications to encourage older adults to interact with technology and, consequently, to contact their relatives more often. The tests also showed that voice commands are important resources for eliminating barriers that make intergenerational connections impossible.