**Author details**

Eric Heng Gu

often keeps patients from seeking help when necessary. In one instance, a female patient fell in her home but refused to activate her emergency alert device until hours later, when her own efforts were proven to be ineffective. These varying degrees of needs and different preferences make designing for the elderly difficult. But we need not complicated solutions.

Advancements in virtual reality technology catalyzes the development of haptic technology but do not exactly overlap with the needs of extreme and elderly users. Most of them deal with sensory and cognitive disabilities and deficiencies. Despite numerous advantages that the technology offer these people, they cannot make good use of the interfaces to access them. The most common outcome is sensory overload. This chapter outlined three desired characteristics to strive for when designing novel haptic interfaces: Immersion, Animacy, and Affordance. The goal of Immersion in this case is not more detailed simulations but more thoughtful ones, often simpler ones. Particularly for immersive experiences involving telepresence, the mediated touch need not be able to convey complex information. As previously stated, Animacy is produced simply from the presence of haptic stimulus rather than its actual content. We argue that long-term usage, rather than isolated instances of use, is the key to fostering connection. Stimuli provided organically over time informs the feeling of

Affordances in design of the interfaces for the elderly should seek to capture and communicate the crucial elements of the interaction while filtering out the rest, resulting in an artificial model within the informational processing capacity of the user. While neuroplasticity allows the brain to adapt to new interfaces, old age does come with a reduction in its ability to remap new information and action. Therefore, taking advantage of existing neurological phenomenon (haptic illusions), using metaphorical UI's, and/or combining with other modalities are promising ways to engage new users without training. If training is necessary, incorporating

In information design, there is already pushback from the general public on the abundance of data we are exposed to in our day-to-day. Designed visual stimuli bombard us everywhere we are, primarily through displays that we own. Trends indicate a desire for more simplified and curated representations, less clutter in our visual field. In the future, we can expect haptic interfaces to be more prevalent in our activities, where more design leads to less information but refined presentation. This shift will be a boon to the rapidly aging population. We believe that this prediction holds in the long run, even as the generation with proficiency in computing esthetics and practices become elderly. Simply because by 2050, half of the population is

We hope to take this work further by creating a set of heuristics for the design of haptic interfaces, expand upon the three key qualities of Immersion, Animacy, and Affordance we distilled from a broad analysis of existing products and research prototypes. We will continue

expected to be nearsighted due to our computer obsessed lifestyle [62].

Instead, we need customizable tools and interfaces for each unique situation.

**6. Conclusion and future work**

62 Assistive Technologies in Smart Cities

Animacy in the interaction.

social learning opportunities is encouraged.

Address all correspondence to: heng.gu@network.rca.ac.uk

Ar+eliers Studio, Imperial College London, London, UK
