Topic > Tangible User Interface for Social Interactions for Older Adults: A Literature Review

To begin with, the aging population faces the challenge of social isolation and loneliness along with health-related issues. The research article on Tangible User Interface aims to review the existing research on TUI (Tangible User Interface) in order to improve social interaction among older adults. Basically, Tangible User Interface bridges the gap between the digital world and the physical world by giving physical form to digital information. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayAlmost a large part of our daily lives is being digitized as an example; from physical calculators to calculators in computers and mobile phones, from physical bank visits to processing all bank related activities through e-banking. Author Ishii and Ullmer introduced the “Tangible Interface” vision. Basically, by coupling digital information with everyday physical objects and architectural surfaces, the interaction between humans and digital information can be enhanced by its traditional graphical user interface. The main difference between the traditional GUI and the Tangible User Interface is that the TUI does not distinguish between input and output. According to the authors there are three main characteristics of TUI: Physical representations are computationally coupled to the underlying digital information. Physical representations incorporate mechanisms for interactive control. Physical representations are perceptually coupled to the actively mediated digital representation. TUI is effective in five types of tasks; Information storage, retrieval and manipulation; Information display; Modeling and Simulation; Management, configuration and control of systems; Education, entertainment and programming systems. Initially, the review was planned to identify, how TUI actually impacts older adults' social interactions or involves older adults in the process of designing and developing the TUI prototype, and if so, in what ways. After conducting the review, they identified three main search terms: “elderly,” “Tangible UI,” and “social.” Basically, the author would focus the research on some targeted criteria, for example the research group must consist of older adults who are generally over 50 years old, it must focus on social aspects, the main focus of TUI is the use of everyday objects and not an entire environment or unknown object. Two researchers conducted the search from June 20, 2017 to July 10, 2017. Four electronic databases were used to perform the search. Furthermore, by combining the main search terms and inclusion and exclusion criteria, the generated search string was seniors AND “tangible user interface” AND social AND NOT robots AND NOT “smart home” AND NOT “ambient intelligence”. The total records identified through database searching and other sources from two searches are 335 records. After removing duplicates there are 235 documents. Among the 235 documents, a detailed search was performed to determine whether the documents met all inclusion and exclusion criteria. Overall, 21 research articles were included as relevant documents using the concept of TUI to improve the social interactions of older adults. Among all, most of the paper aimed to design, develop and evaluate their prototype which aimed to express loneliness and social exclusion among older adults. Furthermore, six research papers were such.