Research with older adults has hinted at the ways that elements beyond the interface play a role in technology use, including videoconferencing. To further understand the range of materials and resources involved, we studied videoconferencing use by ten older individuals with cognitive concerns in a week-long study of interviews, observations, and a modified diary study. Our analysis identified that objects extending beyond software and hardware play a role in videoconferencing, including paper-based objects, personal items, and objects in the built environment. These objects support participants by externalizing information difficult to recall, distributing cognitive effort across time, and lowering cognitive load through their spatial placement and affordances. These insights point to opportunities for researchers working with older people to focus on the work happening outside of today's interfaces. We also discuss how the lens of distributed cognition could help us design better technologies to support age-related cognitive impairment.

Research on technology for older people focuses on older people's experiences-and understandably so. However, the phenomena of othering, or seeing this group as different and worse off, is a persistent problem. In this project, we turned inwards through an 8-month collaborative autoethnography to understand our own experiences with technology issues and supporting others in technology use. We found that each member of our mixed age group faced pervasive and burdensome technology issues and recognized that some of the burden is associated with the evolution of technology tools. Our work contributes an expanded understanding of aging as a sociotechnical process and identifies counternarratives to implicit assumptions we held as HCI researchers working with older people. Our research also shows how reflexive positional methods can surface often unexamined experiences with technology issues and aging among researchers.

HCI research increasingly focuses on everyday life to inform technology design for older adults. Routines, a key aspect of everyday life, have been studied to contextualize technology use. Our work brings attention to understanding of routines around videoconferencing technology among older adults with cognitive concerns. We conducted a week-long study involving observations, interviews, and a modified diary study with six older adults with cognitive concerns who videoconference at least once a week. Our analysis revealed how routines helped people adapt to videoconferencing constraints, how participants navigated disruptions to their videoconferencing routines, and the kinds of routines that were more challenging to manage when faced disruptions. In the discussion, we describe why routines are particularly important to study and support for people with cognitive concerns, the importance of studying older adults' routines to support technology use in HCI, and methods that can enrich HCI research by uncovering insights into routines.

Much research on older people with memory concerns is focused on tracking and informed by the priorities of others. In this paper, we seek to understand the potential that people with memory concerns see in tracking. We conducted interviews with 29 participants with concerns about their memory and engaged in an affective writing approach. We find a range of potentials that can be traced to how participants are already self-tracking. Emotions associated with these potentials vary: from acceptance to resistance, and positive anticipation to aversion. Participants are emotionally motivated to foreclose possibilities in some instances and keep them open in others. While individual and unique, potential is structured by forces that include individual routines, relationships with others, and macro-level institutions and cultural contexts. We reflect on these findings in the context of research on self-tracking with older adults, designing with ambiguity, and forces that structure the experience of living with memory concerns.

While videoconferencing is a promising technology, it may present unique challenges and barriers for older adults with cognitive concerns. This paper presents a deconstructed view of videoconferencing technology use using a sociological dramaturgical framework developed by Erving Goffman. Our study recruited 17 older adults with varying cognitive concerns, employing technology discussion groups, interviews, and observations to gather data. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, we explore videoconferencing use among older adults with cognitive concerns, focusing on three major areas: the "performances and roles" where users adapt to new roles through videoconferencing; the "backstage," which involves the physical and logistical setup; and the "frontstage," where people communicate through audio and visual channels to present a desired impression. Our discussion generates insights into how deconstructing these elements can inform more meaningful and accessible HCI design.

Trigger-Action Programming (TAP) allows endusers to automate IoT devices, social media, and other services. TAP systems typically offer 1) user-friendly, GUI-mediated access to service APIs through “triggers” and “actions” and 2) a simplified if-this-then-that programming model. While simple, TAP’s programming model lacks power and limits what its users can create. We introduce Legato, an automation platform which keeps the convenient trigger and action abstractions from TAP, but allows programmers to connect these triggers and actions with complex logic via JavaScript. Legato piggybacks on IFTTT, taking advantage of IFTTT’s mature ecosystem of integrations. Additionally, Legato allows programmers to store and retrieve persistent state, schedule future events, and safely test their programs. Through a two-stage usability study, we found student programmers easily learned Legato and came up with several scenarios requiring Legato’s power. Based on feedback and observation, we derive design recommendations for future highly-expressive automation systems and reflect on the role of textual programming for end-user automation.

Researchers are studying makerspaces as one way to support older adults in learning about and using new technologies and tools. In this paper, through a long-term (34 months), ethnographic approach, we study the ways that older adults arranged sociotechnical resources to sustain the community use of a makerspace. Our analysis identifies three interconnected resources that were developed: an adaptive staffing approach that could withstand constant personnel shifts and shortages; structured activities to draw interest and overcome challenges associated with learning to use the machines; and reference materials to support individuals in independent usage of the space. We describe the issues that arose as time went on with each of these resource types, and how individuals affiliated with the makerspace adapted the resources to address these issues. In the discussion, we extend best practices by reflecting on strategies that worked well in the makerspace, such as drawing interest through introductory classes, as well as different purposes for reference materials to support technology use.