Meerkat: A Social Community Support Application for Older Adults
Authors: 
Tamir Mendel, 
Eran TochAuthors Info & Claims
Tamir Mendel, Eran TochAuthors Info & ClaimsArticle No.: 177, Pages 1 - 4
Abstract
Meerkat is a social support app that helps older adults tackle hurdles in interacting with mobile applications by receiving contextual support from friends and family or community volunteers. The app allows users to describe the interaction issue, capture a screenshot, draw, and write queries to helpers who can provide understandable explanations. Meerkat is informed by theories of collective efficacy and aims to reduce the barriers to existing social networks. Given COVID-19 social distancing measures, the design of Meerkat adapts patterns of peer support to situations where the users are not co-located. To users who do not have available social support, the app provides a foundation to receive support from a community of volunteers who are social connections to other users. Meerkat also includes a practice mode, facilitating social learning by presenting users with mobile tasks. We conclude with how Meerkat can contribute to collective and individual efficacy.
Supplementary Material
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Published In
April 2022
3066 pages
ISBN:9781450391566
DOI:10.1145/3491101
Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.
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Published: 28 April 2022
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- ICRC - Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center
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CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 29 - May 5, 2022
LA, New Orleans, USA
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