RESEARCH > Projects > SMARTAGE

SMART-AGE

The topic of digitalization encompasses all areas of life and stages of life. Digitalization is changing the way we communicate and connect with each other, how we gather information and conduct research, how we work and consume, and how we deal with our health.

Thus, digitalization has the potential to positively impact the quality of life for people of all ages. The goal is to actively involve older generations, who did not grow up in digitalized environments and therefore may have less experience with new technologies, in the digitalization process.

Therefore, in the SMART-AGE project (which means smart aging), we aim to investigate to what extent and in what ways older people can benefit from the use of digital technologies. We are particularly interested in how the use of various apps affects everyday and leisure behavior, activities of daily living, and health.

SMART-AGE is a study conducted by the University Hospitals of Heidelberg and Mannheim, in collaboration with the Universities of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Tübingen, Frankfurt, Mainz, and the Distance Learning University of Hagen. The study is being carried out at the University of Heidelberg. The project is funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation.

What do we do in SMART-AGE?

We provide the apps smartVERNETZT, smartIMPULS, and smartFEEDBACK for the study partners. We collect feedback on the apps through smartFEEDBACK and use this to determine how the apps can be improved.

What is our goal in SMART-AGE? What do we want to investigate in SMART-AGE?

Our goal is to find out what needs to be changed in the apps to better support the study partners. We collect various types of feedback and ask targeted questions to the study partners. Additionally, we develop a method to derive requirements from feedback based on our experiences.

Links

SMART-AGE Website:

Publications:

Radeck L, Paech B, Wahl H, Schubert A, Sperling U, Kramer-Gmeiner F, Wettstein M, Understanding IT-related Well-being, Aging and Health Needs of Older Adults with Crowd-RE, Third International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health, IEEE, 2022.
Radeck L, Paech B, Integrating Implicit Feedback into Crowd Requirements Engineering – A Research Preview. Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality: 29th International Working Conference, REFSQ, ACM, 2023
Radeck L, Paech B, Channeling the Voice of the Crowd: Applying Structured Queries in User Feedback Collection. Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality: 30th International Working Conference, REFSQ, Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024
Böttinger, Melissa J., Elena Litz, Katharina Gordt-Oesterwind, Carl-Philipp Jansen, Nicole Memmer, Christian Mychajliw, Leon Radeck, Jürgen M. Bauer, and Clemens Becker. “Co-Creating a Digital Life-Integrated Self-Assessment (LiSA) for Older Adults (Preprint).” JMIR Aging 6 (2023). doi.org/10.2196/46738.