COLABORAR participated on a Business Coaching Workshop organised by the project SIforAge and held at CIMPOR INTERCEMENT, in Lisbon.

As COLABORAR is a stakeholder of the project SIforAGE, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa invited Fraunhofer Portugal to participate in a debate about the senior market segment, on business coaching and on a Master class related to the SME Instrument in Horizon 2020. COLABORAR got together with companies and social institutions in the area of senior care and wellness and shared experiences and good practices from the field in conducting studies with senior end-users, with a special focus on ethics.

In was a honour for COLABORAR to be invited to this event.

This week at Fraunhofer AICOS, COLABORAR hosted an Internal Workshop regarding this project.

The goal of the workshop was to let the team know about the current state of things within the network COLABORAR, to exchange ideas on how the network may be even more useful to researchers, and how researchers themselves may contribute to nourish our network.

In order to do this, we shared insights about what the user network means to our volunteers and the beneficial impact that our activities may have on older adults, their daily activities, mental stimulation or self-confidence.

While the user group of older adults is a very heterogeneous one, there are aspects which often come about in user research and usability testing. There are specific issues that we need to take into account, such as planning activities in advance, allowing for significant ones to participate as well, draw an efficient plan to make use of time and breaks, and so forth.

Most of the tips we shared with researchers in this workshop came from insights provided by our researchers from the HCI, who were interviewed some time ago to share their difficulties, experience and strategies. This work has actually resulted in a paper that was published in 2013.

In the end, researchers could clarify some doubts and COLABORAR shared some materials to help researchers plan the activities with senior end-users.

The researchers working on ChefMyself were joined by the senior designers from the user network COLABORAR.

The researchers explained the different phases of the project in which participants helped (in interviews, in loco observations and usability and validation tests with tablet and TV interfaces), highlighting how precious their participation and inputs were. Then, it was time for a demonstration of the kitchen robot integrated with the tablet application. And the result was a delicious and healthy “creme de cenoura e alho francês” (cream carrot soup with leek)!

In the meantime, researchers heard seniors talking about home remedies, while also taking the time to pose questions about healthy eating.

In the end, all our guests tasted the delicious cream carrot soup and each of them was presented with a cookbook prepared by the researchers, using the recipes from Maria João Clavel, from the blog Clavel’s Cook .

The book contained a set of 7 easy and healthy recipes that seniors could effortlessly try out at home!