Cognitive Infocommunications Preferences of Active Senior Citizens Barnabás Vági * , Tibor Fegyó ** , Csaba Zainkó ** , Géza Németh ** and Artur Kolesinski *** * Bay Zoltán Nonprofit Ltd. for Applied Research, Budapest, Hungary (BZAKA-IKTI) ** Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics, Budapest University of Technology & Economics, Budapest, Hungary (BME TMIT) ***Knowledge Society Association, Warsaw, Poland (SSW) *vagi.barnabas@t-online.hu, **{fegyo, zainko, nemeth}@tmit.bme.hu, ***artur.kolesinski@ssw.org.pl Abstract—This paper examines the cognitive inofocommunications preferences of active senior citizens. The study is based on quantitative questionnaire surveys and qualitative workshops held in Budapest in Warsaw within the PAELIFE project [1]. Our findings show that both the user interface and the hardware and software limitations of currently widely used infocommunications tools and services raise barriers even for active Polish and Hungarian seniors of 60-70 years. Possible alternative solutions are proposed. I. INTRODUCTION Many senior citizens lead a quite active life. During they career several of them have not had any formal training for using modern infocommunications services. Consequently they often experience difficulties in using them and this need has been in the focus of related research [2-6]. A device - serving as a personal assistant for them - may help them in actively participating in the life of the society, and also to support their lives in various situations with todays’ advanced IT technologies. The PAELIFE project includes participants from Portugal, France, Hungary and Poland, both universities and major economic actors such as Microsoft Portugal. In order to estimate the possible scope of such an assistant, the project involved research activities to obtain information on their use of technology, attitudes, frequent problems and empathetic needs. Project partners intended to gather information concerning user requirements, gaps, opinions on various human-computer interactions, user’s cognitive context and online resources that are available for elderly citizens and could enhance elderly social life and productivity. Two methods were used for collecting information directly from possible users. The quantitative survey focused on the use of online resources and intended to facilitate a kind of forecast on the possible reception of the planned personal assistant depending on its physical appearance and the range of functions, while also providing information that is necessary for setting up a model of cases and tasks that it should help with. The workshop method was basically used for technology hands-on sessions and was intended to reveal information on the ergonomics and efficiency of certain technical solutions from the one hand, and on the problems of current technology use by the elderly citizens on the other. Results of the quantitative and qualitative techniques shall be interpreted together, and the key to understand certain replies or attitudes gained through one method can often be found through the other method. II. METHODOLOGY The results are not representative neither to the public in general, nor to the age group, as the topic of this research is a non-existing product which is under development, and thus, the statistical representativeness of the sample is less helpful than an insight-type research – although involving quantitative instruments. When collecting our respondents we were looking for such people in the specified age group who were interested in IT technologies and had some experience with devices such as mobile phones, computers and household equipment, gadgets. The intended aim was to understand the opinion of those who might have been users of the planned assistant, had it already been made available to the public. From this point of view the survey might be considered as reflecting the opinion of possible users with some restrictions. These restrictions derive from the low number of questioned people so far, as the target number of respondents per country was 60 persons. For the quantitative survey we used questionnaires that were applied personally at elderly homes and among elderly friends and relatives. In the Hungarian and Polish surveys accomplished so far, we gained valid responses from a total of 128 respondents, 79 in Hungary and 49 in Poland. The questionnaire consisted mainly of closed questions with predefined lists that respondents had to evaluate. These lists are non-exhaustive, we listed such functions at the individual questions that we considered important from the point of view of the personal assistant to be developed. Besides the quantitative surveys, a three-part workshop day was held at the Budapest University of Technology on July 2, 2012. The workshops had 14 participants, 8 men and 6 women, mostly in their 60’s, and 10 of them had a university degree. 6 reported to have very basic computer skills, 6 reported to have basic skills and 2 reported to have higher skills, whereas none had very high skills. They use a total of 11 personal computers, 5 notebooks, 12 mobile phones and 1 smartphone. Nobody had a tablet. 11 participants reported to use the internet daily, and 3 use it rarely or never. 4 participants use Skype also daily, 3 weekly, 1 monthly, and 6 never. Their usage of Skype for chat, voice calls and video calls were fairly similar. The use of YouTube was similar: almost half of the 47 978-1-4673-5188-1/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE CogInfoCom 2012 • 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications • December 2-5, 2012, Kosice, Slovakia