Silver Test Bed

Conducting social studies related to the elderly is a first step towards understanding their needs and designing silver products and services accordingly. However, collecting information about the elderly’s interests and preferences on a large scale over an extended time period is a daunting challenge. In this project, we propose building the world’s first silver test bed with real-time contextual insights into the behaviour and preferences of the elderly population and to help businesses and government agencies understand the implications of these insights. 

By incorporating autonomous mobile tagging, mobility information from our research partners, and comments from elderly users on products/services they have used, we aim to build a real-time social cognitive network that seamlessly identifies and combines new sources of contextual information relevant to each elderly individual. In addition, based on the findings from the collected data, advanced human factors design methodologies for age-friendly services will be developed.

The silver test bed will be a one-stop rating and recommendation social network for the elderly to voice their opinions about anything they encounter in their daily lives on the go and to provide an easy way for their loved ones to be aware of their activities. These findings will provide in-depth and comprehensive insights into the real needs of the elderly and unlock potentially overlooked research and/or business opportunities.