Carolina Rubio presents her Master thesis

President: Professor Pedro Manuel Moreira Vaz Antunes de Sousa
 
Director: Professor Rui Filipe Fernandes Prada
 
Co-director: Professor Ulises Cortés
 
Vogais: Professor João Manuel Brisson Lopes
 
Date: 3/11/2011 – 14:30h / Sala de Reuniões 1, do Pavilhão de 
Informática II, IST – Alameda.
 
Abstract: In the context of Assistive Technologies (AT), the present 
work addresses the improvement and greater adaptability of iTutorials, a 
supportive system we have been working on over the last two years, and 
which is intended to provide in-home support to cognitively impaired 
older adults in the performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). 
The new approach to iTutorials resulted in a more adaptive system 
addressing, on the one hand, activity guidance based on the actual 
context and the user profile, and on the other hand, the design of an 
interactive interface tailored to the user needs in an attempt to 
mitigate the physical decline and memory loss affecting our target 
users. The agent-based architecture of iTutorials deploys a distributed 
system that allows caregivers to enter and manage data from a different 
device than the touch-screen computer where the user interface runs. 
Empiric results obtained while testing with real Portuguese older 
volunteers demonstrated that our application is easy to learn and 
pleasant to use, and proved its aid to elderly users with cognitive 
disabilities in the accomplishment of basic tasks.