Supporting Older Adults Social Network: the Design of e-Inclusion Communication Services

This paper presents a study aimed at investigating how domestic communication technologies could be designed in order to profitably intervene in the daily life of elderly people to enhance and enrich their social relationships and to prevent the phenomenon of social isolation. Moving from the identification of typical communication patterns among older adults and their social network, we suggest the importance of discerning between the public and private spheres of socialization in relation to the specific target group of elderly people, as a basis for the design of e-inclusion communication services. We discuss the barriers preventing older adults to successfully manage communicative technologies and present the design of two virtual places, the Social Window and the Public Square