| dc.description.abstract | Technology is ubiquitous in modern day society and has the potential to
enhance one's quality of life. Numerous innovative assistive technologies are
designed to aid elderly people in every day activities and enable them to
maintain a measure of independence longer. One such assistive technology
was the PAM-AID walking aid: a robotic walking aid designed to provide frail,
visually impaired elders with the physical support of a rollator, coupled with
the navigational assistance necessary for safe, independent mobility.
A user-centred design approach was integral to the design and development
of PAM-AID and the first part of this thesis, details the research undertaken
to ensure that, as far as possible, PAM-AID met the needs of potential users.
Studies were conducted with carers and elders to establish elders'
requirements for PAM-AID. The results of these studies directly influenced
the functional specification of the first PAM-AID prototype. Following an
iterative design life cycle, further studies were conducted to evaluate the
usability of the first and second prototypes and the results of these studies
enabled informed design decisions could be made. Therefore, elders were
involved at every stage of the design process, to ensure that PAM-AID was
an efficient and acceptable technology to this user group.
However, throughout this preliminary work, an interesting discrepancy in
elders' attitudes began to emerge. It became evident that although elders
thought that PAM-AID was a useful walking aid for other frail elderly people,
they did not think that PAM-AID was beneficial for them personally. In other
words, elders' attitudes indicated that they might not use or accept PAM-AID,
even though they would clearly benefit from this innovative technology.
Indeed, other research has shown that many assistive technologies are often
under utilised or discarded by elders, even when the potential benefits of the
technology are clearly evident. This was a pivotal point in the research
programme, as it highlighted the importance of monitoring elders' attitudes to
predict future use of and acceptance of assistive technology.
Since no applicable tool exists for measuring individuals' attitudes to
technologies such as PAM-AID, the main empirical work of this research
programme involved the development of a psychometric scale: the Attitudes
to Technology Scale (ATS). The inductive approach to development of this
scale involved: the generation of items, the reduction of the items into
meaningful subscales, as well as the demonstration of the scale's reliability
and validity. Throughout its development, the scale was applied to a number
of different types of technology such as ATMs, computers, microwaves,
mobile phones, VCRs and the Internet. The scale has been used to
investigate the effect of age and sex differences in terms of attitudes to
technology. Thus, the ATS is unique in that it has been developed for use
with ID1 types of technology and with individuals of ~ ages. The limitations of
the scale have been noted and further work is needed to address these
limitations.
It is hoped that this scale will have both academic and commercial research
applications, but above all, the ATS could be applied to continually monitor
users' attitudes during the design and development of new technologies. It is
proposed that the measurement of users' attitudes should be an integral part
of the design life cycle, resulting in more useable and acceptable technology. | en_US |
