30
Copyright © 2011, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Chapter 3
A User-Driven Approach to
Developing Ambient Assisted
Living Systems for Older People:
The SOPRANO Project
aBstRact
This chapter describes some of the results of the EU-funded SOPRANO project to develop an Ambient
Assisted Living system to promote active ageing and ageing-in-place. The chapter outlines SOPRANO’s
experience and application research approach to ensure that end-users are involved in all stages of
the research and development. A number of key areas for application development were identifed and
developed as a set of use cases (or descriptive models), for example for medication reminding, and to
support exercise. These use cases were further refned through visualization and iterative prototyping
techniques with end-users to ensure usability, usefulness and acceptability for users. The SOPRANO
prototype system is described together with future plans for deployment in demonstration sites and feld
trials.
Andrew Sixsmith
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Sonja Mueller
empirica Gesellschaft fur Kommunikations und
Technologieforschung,Germany
Felicitas Lull
empirica Gesellschaft fur Kommunikations und
Technologieforschung, Germany
Michael Klein
CAS Software AG, Germany
Ilse Bierhoff
Smart Homes, The Netherlands
Sarah Delaney
Work Research Centre, Ireland
Paula Byrne
University of Liverpool, UK
Sandra Sproll
University Stuttgart, Germany
Robert Savage
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Elena Avatangelou
Exodus, SA, Greece
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-825-8.ch003