1  2015 Jurnal Krea-TIF Vol: 03 No: 01 A ELDERLY SUPPORT APPLICATION “CHEERS” (CASE STUDY: CITY OF DERABIN NORTH MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA) Hersanto Fajri Unversitas Ibn Khaldun Bogor Jln. K.H Sholeh Iskandar Km. 2 Bogor e-mail: hersanto.fajri@gmail.com Abstract — In the society that we are living in, service is one of the most important things that keep an order to a society or a community to function well. This research’s target audiences are the current active elderly and the upcoming future generation elderly among the age of 60 to 80. The area of Darebin, North Melbourne will be the chosen site for this research. Based on some research data, it shows that the rates of the third age are increasing time by time and there are not many options of elderly services out there in our society (BCL, 2010). What researcher found from field observation are the existing services for the elderly often provides negative impressions to the users instead of positive ones. For instance, the lack of freedom is the most common thing that is experienced by most elderly who lives in an elderly centre. It is depressing and the lack of intense care in the retirement village is often being encountered. The other elderly service which is the residential age care facilities is not affordable for everyone although it provides better services to the users. Since Australia consists of multi-cultural people from all around the world, therefore the need of creating helpful services in the field of technology information to assist them to live well is a big achievement for this research. Keywords — Multimedia, information technology, elderly, elderly support application, ios, ipad application, Derabin city council. I. FOREWORD A. Background ustralia is one of the countries that have the oldest population in the western world (Parson 1993). Elderly is the largest user groups in the use of health facilities provided by the government. This is very normal to those who are baby boomers to have very good living conditions on the day they retired for 20-40 years ahead. Many of those elderly develop new inter- ests after they retire. These interests and talents should be nurtured so that they all become active, enthusiastic and have a strong memory for the duration of their retirees. They‟re actually quite capable of absorbing information to learn new things. According to Jones (1989, p. 12) that learning differences are not so great until age 70 years or older. This is a favor- able time for them to learn new things, spending time with family and friends and develop new interests. The elderly are actually people that are similar to the younger generation with interests and talents, just that we are from a different generation. Today, some elderly never stop learning new experiences in their lives and one of them is the use of information technology. The use of modern technology by people among the age of 12 to 60 is growing very rapidly this modern era which became a very common thing in our society (BCL, 2010). Communication technology is actually very diverse starting from the use of the Internet for browsing, the use of a mobile phone to communicate directly, email to send electronic letters, and online communications that can be done from home and abroad with little cost. This technology may be a common thing for young people and young executives today. However for some elderly, these findings are something hard to be accepted and difficult to be understood by them even if they try to learn. According to the Australian Social Trends, Internet and computer use at home between 1994 to 2000, doubled from 0.2 million users to 2.2 million users every day. Although its use is increasing every year, the percent- age of elderly people over age 65 who use computers and the Internet is very small, about 10 percent for computers and 6 percent for the Internet. This may be explained from the knowledge and skills they are low for these technologies and fewer opportunities to acquire computing skills during his lifetime. Current elderly and the future generation elderly will be much difference in the future. Those who grow older in the future will not find hesitation with the use of modern information technology gadgets that has evolved since they have already accustomed to the use of technology when they were young. This can be seen from the total percentage of persons aged 35-64 in the present (future elderly) that many uses the internet as much as 31 percent and this number will continue to grow every year. “The world is rapidly aging: the number of people aged 60 and above as a proportion of the global population will double from 11% in 2006 to 22% in 2050. By then there will be more and more parents of children (aged 0-14 years) in the population for the first time (BBLC, 2010). Looking at the data already obtained from the Australian Social Trend, it is believed that in Melbourne 2020 later on, they all will not feel awkward in using the latest technology, which will be circulated among the community for various needs, and various advanced equipment will be created for various people without any obstacle to learn all this. B. Objective Seeing the problems faced by the Australian elderly in Darebin during their retirement period that is the problem with the environment around them which is the lack of attention, memory loss, declining health, less activity, no friends and boring life. We recommend a solution that could improve their lives for better days ahead. This solution was