Authenticity, Relatability and Collaborative Approaches to Sharing Knowledge about Assistive Living Technology John Vines 1 , Peter Wright 1 , David Silver 2 , Maggie Winchcombe 2 and Patrick Olivier 1 1 Culture Lab, School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, UK {john.vines; p.c.wright; patrick.olivier}@ncl.ac.uk 2 Years Ahead Partnership, London, UK {david.silver; maggie.winchcombe} @yearsahead.co.uk ABSTRACT Health and care providers are increasingly looking to online and peer-to-peer services to supplement existing channels of assistive living technology (ALTs) provision and assessment. We describe the findings from 12 co- design workshops with 28 people from the UK representing a range of older people with and without health conditions, users of ALT and carers for people using such devices. The workshops were conducted to explore issues related to finding reliable information about ALT with the goal of gathering requirements for the design of a peer-to-peer knowledge sharing platform. Our analysis highlights how a current reliance on peers and informal networks relates to a desire to establish the authenticity and relatability of another person’s experience to one’s own circumstances. This connects to a perceived mistrust in information where provenance and authenticity is not clear. We use these to critique the wisdom of taking an e-marketplace and recommendation service approach to ALT provision and assessment, and offer alternatives based on our findings. Author Keywords Assistive technology; peer-to-peer healthcare; online health communities; older people; ageing; co-design. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. INTRODUCTION The study of collaborative and peer-to-peer communities around issues to do with personal health is an important area of CSCW research [15,16,20,22]. Forums, message boards and online information resources, that are often collectively contributed to by members of the public, have been demonstrated to be a useful means for bringing people together who have similar conditions and health needs [30], providing a shared understanding of what it means to live with specific conditions [22], and support a widened awareness of how to live healthily [16]. Such collaborative approaches to healthcare have been particularly influential in the UK, where patients are encouraged to review and rate the public health services they have used [1], to contribute their knowledge and experience to online resources [17] or share advice with peers via online communities [14]. We extend current CSCW research on collaborative approaches to personal health by exploring the applicability of existing approaches to peer knowledge sharing in the context of searching for expertise and information around assistive living technology (ALT). ALT is a broadly defined category of products or devices that enable older people or those with disabilities to live more independently than would otherwise be possible [49]. Our research was undertaken in the UK, where historically most ALT assessment and provision has been state-provided by local government authorities as part of social care services. As with much social care provision in the UK, ALT is an increasingly mixed-economy (private and state funded) and market-oriented domain. This comes with a shift in policy towards supporting patient and consumer choice—suggesting those who require ALT have a greater autonomy in deciding what they use and buy. However, there are well-known issues such as a lack of public awareness of what is available, inappropriate selling, and a large proportion of ALT abandonment by owners shortly after first use [37]. This is problematized further in the UK as the ALT market is mostly formed of small and relatively unknown companies. In line with the UK Government’s ‘digital by default’ strategy [11], local authorities are looking to online services as a way to resolve some of these challenges. This has led to a range of online information portals and marketplaces for ALT being piloted by different authorities (e.g. [24, 39]), while there are moves to incorporate peer-to-peer elements through user-generated feedback on ALT products and retailers [33]. In our research, we set out to understand the information, advice and expertise seeking needs of people who are purchasing or in receipt of ALT. Our aim was to explore the ways in which online services and digital platforms—including Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. CSCW '15, March 14 - 18 2015, Vancouver, BC, Canada Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-2922-4/15/03…$15.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675222