Abstract
The Smart House technology introduced an intelligent home designed to monitor the health and well being of senior residents unobtrusively. As one of the most important components of the smart house technology, we are developing an online eating-pattern monitoring system to be incorporated into a Smart House. A combination of four needs assessment methods including focus groups, observation, questionnaire and document review was used to gather information from seniors to determine critical design requirements for the system. A framework of information and interface requirements was developed to compare the effectiveness of the four methods used in our needs assessment. All four methods provided useful design recommendations, but each method differed in terms of specification of information and interface requirements. Based on the classification and comparison of methods, other practitioners can determine tradeoffs and select relevant needs assessment methods for their particular application.
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