The first edition of the Ageing Summit was held in Porto at Fundação de Serralves and was organized by Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Porto.

The issue of ageing was addressed from different points of view: challenges for society, public and social policies, innovation and active and healthy ageing. Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS‘s researcher Filipe Sousa was at the Ageing Summit ’18 to moderate the panel on “Ageing Societies: Innovation and Investment”. The intervening role of seniors and some examples of how society can listen to their opinions and take them into account in decision making was one of the topics highlighted.

COLABORAR attended the event, as these are topics of interest. We were happy to know that seniors are being perceived as an active part in decision-making related to ageing.

COLABORAR attended the “Meetings with Innovation in Health” in April 4th. The event was held at the Hard Club, in the city of Porto and was organized by Health Cluster Portugal.

Many healthcare providers, medical devices manufacturers and R&D institutions attended the event. Some of them had a booth at the “Market for Open Innovation in Health”. The theme of the meeting was “New Research and Innovation Agendas for Future Health”. There were three thematic sessions: “Precision Medicine & Digital Health”, “Advanced Therapies & New Vaccines” and “Nanomedicine & Bioelectronics”. Speakers gave us an overview on areas of health that will be highlighted in the future.

The “Market for Open Innovation in Health” had the aim of promoting contacts between potential scientific, clinical, technological partners and companies.

We liked meeting with other researchers and getting to know about their scientifc projects in the field of technology and innovation for health.

As usually, we are making visits to the centres, wishing an excellent 2018 to the very supportive people who collaborate with us in many Fraunhofer‘s projects. We offer some tokens as well, along with the COLABORAR postcard.

Wishing all of you a happy new year. Here is to another year of great tests, questionnaires, user research and usability issues.

Happy Holidays everyone!

As end-of-year approaches, the COLABORAR team is making performance reviews and planning for the next year. We evaluate the last year work and accomplishments, hilighting the support for  Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS‘ research projects by recruiting users for research activities; COLABORAR also provided a guide to research ethics and a manual on how to conduct research activities with users, thus contributing for the uniformization of procedures and promoting guidance and reccomendations of good practices. We set goals for the next year as well. We plan improvements in the software COLABORAR is using to manage the projects and we will conduct a new survey with users in the network. And lots of tests and other research activities!

Happy Holidays from the COLABORAR team to you.

It was an afternoon for celebrating the success of COLABORAR.

Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS hosted an event to mark 6 years of the project. We invited a group of volunteers from the user network COLABORAR and gave thanks for their participation. Symbolically, we were thanking all volunteers who participated in research activities throuth the last years. We hilighted the importance of their feedback on our projects and showed them the apps developed. Most importantly, we took this time for talking with them: different generations united for research and technology.

COLABORAR thanks all volunteers form the user network COLABORAR!

The researchers would like to thank the 1500 individuals who participated as users on the Fraunhofer’s tests and user research activities in the last 6 years. Their participation and critiques are essential to the quality of applications that has been developed at Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS.

Thank you to all our COLABORAR Volunteers!

What is World Usability Day?

World Usabiliy Day or Make Things Easier Day is an initiative celebrated worldwide annualy on the second Thursday of November, since 2005, this year on November 9. It aims to hilight the contribution of people who research, design, and evaluate the user experience of products and services.

This year’s theme is ” Inclusion through User Experience”.

“Inclusion is a complex condition, which in itself is not easy to harmonize, as individual and social diversity, for example in access to educational, health, work, and technology opportunities.Technology, nowadays is more, more powerful, and economically accessible, it is an undeniable factor of inclusion and growth, a carrier infrastructure of opportunities for participation and competence development in many areas. But if participation is a cultural property, what are the characteristics of the technologies that can best help it?” (Campus Luigi Einaudi – Italy)

 

In celebration of World Usability Day, many organizations hold events to mark the day. COLABORAR takes this opportunityto thank all the participants in usability studies of Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, because users are essential to these studies. Additionaly, we would like to introduce you to the Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS’ Human-Computer Interaction research team members.

Ana Vasconcelos

Ana Vasconcelos is an Engineer in Informatics. She has worked in many projects related to User Interface Usability in the area of technology for Ambient Assisted Living for older adults. Her main focus has been mobile health and wellness solutions, adding contributions to successful mobile technology interventions.

Catarina Correia

Catarina Correia is a Communication Designer. She usually works in the visual identity, design of interaction or in projects’ communication. In the most cases, she works with mobile applications and wearable devices.

Eduardo Pereira

Eduardo Pereira is a User Experience and Interaction Designer. He works in projects related to serious games for therapeutic rehabilitation or technologies for Developing Countries.

Elsa Oliveira

Elsa Oliveira is a Communication Designer. She is involved in the creation of user interfaces in projects related to serious games for fall prevention and physical exercise for the elderly. She usually works in many projects’ aspects, since the initial concept to the final communication.

Francisco Nunes

Francisco Nunes is a an Engineer in Informatics. He is the responsible for the Human-Computer Interaction team and thus he supports researchers in many projects. His main research interest is especially in the field of Self-care technologies and Ambient Assisted Living for older adults.  He is also a regular international conference speaker.

Jorge Ribeiro

Jorge Ribeiro is an Interaction Designer. He has been involved in studies about user research and experience design targeted older adults, being therefore in constant contact with older adults from the user network COLABORAR.

Paulo Silva

Paulo Silva is a Mechanical Engineer. He works in the development of a prototype for the automatic detection of Malaria, ensuring its mechanical viability, and focus on usability studies with the aim of ensuring a universal use of the prototype. In addition to the product development focus, his interest areas are: innovation, CAD modelation and 3D printing.

Ricardo Peixoto

Ricardo Peixoto is a Mechanical Engineer and an Industrial Designer. He works with 3D object prototyping for various contexts and has a special interest in products designed to solve usability problems in the fine motor skills and manual dexterity of the elderly.

Sílvia Rêgo

Sílvia Rêgo is a Nurse and she is the main responsible of the user network COLABORAR. She coordinates tests with users, organizing test sessions, recruiting participants and sheduling tests. She is also involved in issues related to organizational procedures of usabiliy and validation tests, ethics in research and submisson of studies to ethics committees.

The holidays are here and it is the perfect time to thank the volunteers of the user network COLABORAR for the cooperation.

We payed visits to the centres and offered our season’s greetings postcards along some tokens with a big “Thank you!” and a smile.

The COLABORAR team wishes all of you an enchanted Holiday Season and a Happy New Year filled with health, success and happiness.

We gratefully appreciate your good will. Your participation in our project as end users means a lot. We see you in 2017, with fresh projects related to new technologies!