By Remco Top, intern
In 2017 life in the city will be very different from today. There will be more elderly people than youngsters and the role of the government is declining, so people have to depend on themselves or their families more. To tackle coming issues, innovative ICT-breakthroughs are necessary. Because sitting behind the geraniums is not an option. Within the project COMMIT, we are looking for answers to these social problems by developing pilots such as Play, Touch, Exercise and Monitor. On 8 November 2012, scientists and experts from Waag came together in the office of Logica (Amstelveen) to brainstorm about these developments.
Tangible Interface
In four interactive sessions, the participants discuss various scenarios and look for relevance of scientific PhD-research. The pilots, which mainly focus on the context, are enriched by specific in-depth research. Because how a Tangible Interface works and what you can do with it, are two completely different questions. But by looking at these different angles, technical knowledge and practical experience will come together for better output.
More exercise
In the pilot Exercise, we explore how to encourage older people to exercise more. They look at potential techniques such as the Kinect. a game console that shows your body movements on a television screen. The players can join the game from different locations, and still play together on one screen. This increases social interaction, which is important because social contact and technique will become vital parts of our lives in the future. And who knows, maybe with the Kinect, you can go on a virtual safari in Africa with your grandchildren.
Working together
During the discussion that ended the brainstorm, the participants could see many cross links with other projects and everyone realized that cooperation is necessary. More of these sessions will follow and people who work in the healthcare industry will look at the different scenarios that we create. This new input shall result in better concepts and a better society in 2017.
