Connected Resources - Empowering Older People to Age Resourcefully

With this video, we showcase the possibilities of the Internet of Things and machine learning to support improvisation in older people. Available smart products for older people tend to be developed with narrowly predefined use-scenarios, based on stereotypes of elderly as passive, immobile, and technologically incompetent. This type of products may restrict older people's existing capabilities of resourcefulness and autonomy [1]. As an alternative approach, we created Connected Resources, a family of combinable sensors and actuators for older people that encourages them to negotiate and situate use according to their personal and changing circumstances with a high level of freedom. The objects learn older people's unique ways of using these artifacts and share them through an online platform to encourage the development of new strategies. In this way, Connected Resources celebrate older people's creativity, instead of providing normative solutions or enforcing compliance with certain behavior.