SO MEDALL

A prototype service will be implemented and tested among the seniors over national borders. SoMedAll project produces a platform that offers social media focused on the needs of the elderly with a variety of easy-to-use user interfaces including web, PC, IPTV and mobile phone (equipment already at home) taking into account the skill levels of the users. We implement a prototype service, test use it among the elderly over national borders. We study the usability and the impact of the services to the life quality of the elderly.End-users’ point of view will be taken into account in practice in Italy, Finland and possibly in Slovenia. One important issue is also to analyse possible cultural effects on the acceptance and desire for these kinds of social media services.

Objectives

Objective is to make social media usable for senior people:

to build social media applications and activities around the content; to provide easy ways to create, store and share knowledge, experiences and memories
to provide easy fast communication, social interaction and creation of social networks to develop tools that support co experience and co presence
to develop easy, adaptable and guided user interfaces for creating, managing and sharing content taking into account the mental and physical capabilities of the elderly people

The service can be used with users own language and supports multicultural communication

Expected results and impact

Technology deployment timeline we have two different kinds of results:

SoMedAll software platform with including modules that has been developed in the project as the prototype and pilot. Pilot is expected to be ready for deployment in the short term.

Service concepts that use the new SoMedAll software modules to adapt to the user conditions and predict their evolution and adaptive interfaces will only be deployed in homes in the medium term.

One important result will be also the knowledge achieved concerning the cultural differences and attitudes towards technology based social media services among elderly people.

Partners

Partners involved in the project

Organization	Type	Country	Website
Miina Sillanpää Foundation	End User	Finland	www.miinasillanpaansaatio.fi
Gonga Group Oy	SME	Finland	www.conga.fi
National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT)	R&D	Italy	www.cnit.it
Cooperativa sociale A R. L (ALDIA)	End User	Italy	www.aldia.it
Mediasoft Ltd	SME	Slovenia	www.mediasoft.si

Project name: Social Media for All Elderly People
Website: http://somedall.vtt.fi/
Coordinator: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Duration: 24 Months
Starting Date: 01.02.2010
Total budget: € 1.679.834
Public contribution: € 907.250,50

Contact

Tuula Petäkoski-Hult

E.: tuula.petakoski-hult@vtt.fi

T.: + 358 40 5298 123