Acceptability of notifications delivered to older adults by technology-based assisted living services

The goal of this research is to study the acceptability of notifications delivered to older adults by technology-based assisted living services. Because computing systems are now ubiquitous, interruption management has become an important issue. It has been previously shown that the acceptability of interrupting notifications delivered by technology-based assistive services is influenced by their level of urgency and intrusiveness. However, these studies have mostly been focusing on younger adults and fall short of showing the role played by the nature of the interrupted user's activity. This article presents an experimental study that involved older old adults (M = 82) placed in different fictional situations of interruption by a notification during an activity of daily living (ADL). The level of both urgency and intrusiveness influences the acceptability of notifications. More interestingly, both the nature of the ADLs (basic/instrumental) and the main resources engaged in the activity (cognitive/physical) influence the acceptability of notifications. Notifications are less accepted if the interrupted ADL is an instrumental one that mainly engages cognitive resources. These findings strongly suggest that assistive services should be context-aware, at least for this population. Before delivering a notification, the assistive system should be aware of the type of activity the user is performing and decide whether the time to notify the user is appropriate or whether the notification should be postponed.