Smart Home Technology Effect on Behavior, Cognition, and Wellbeing of Individuals Aging In Place

Abstract

As many older adults prefer to age in place, there is a possibility of elevating the Quality of Life (QoL) via implementing smart home technologies, specifically Voice-Controlled Intelligent Personal Assistants (VIPA). This study explores the acceptance and user behavior of older adults who utilize such devices and how it affects caregivers in providing care and peace of mind for caregivers and older adults. The research method adopted for this study consisted of a qualitative thematic analysis of verified Amazon Echo Dot 3rd Generation reviews, posted on Amazon's website, that involved the keywords senior, elderly, grandparents, and caregiver. The reviews were extracted via a web scraping software, ParseHub, that helped organize and export the reviews into a Microsoft Excel workbook to prepare for coding that data. The reviews provided insight into how seniors and caregivers utilize the VIPA device to age in place, helping determine relevant themes. The dataset was obtained after filtering through 1,048,808 online reviews by keywords and set the search criteria concerning the reviews type set to verified only. The datasets included 414 verified online reviews that contained the keywords senior, elderly, grandparents, and caregiver. The process resulted in forming eight themes, which are entertainment, communication, companionship, learning and news, emergency and security, reminders and alarms, home automation, and shopping. The users, seniors, and caregivers gave insight into how they utilize the VIPA device, which helped understand the most common uses of VIPA devices among older adults. Moreover, some of the reviews included additional information that indicated an elevated Quality of Life after acquiring and using the VIPA device, such as a senior with visual impairment using the smart speaker to control their home lights via voice commands.