Technologies for older adults largely focus on monitoring, safety, and functional support, with less attention to everyday emotional meaning-making. Reflective practices can support emotional wellbeing in later life, yet reflective tools tailored to older adults, particularly in India, remain limited. Self-perceptions of aging (SPA) are strongly linked to emotional wellbeing, but SPA work largely relies on questionnaires and clinical formats rather than culturally grounded tools for reflection. This pictorial presents a research-through-design process leading to a culturally grounded reflection tool for older adults in India. It combines SPA-based reflection cards and prompts with non-diagnostic reflective guidance drawn from a curated corpus rooted in cultural understanding. The work co-designed SPA reflection cards grounded in older adults’ metaphors and narratives, and developed the guidance system with older adults and domain experts. It contributes design knowledge on operationalizing SPA in culturally attuned, technology-mediated reflective tools for older adults in urban India.

What happens when your walls begin to move? This paper explores the design of human-robot interaction for architectural-scale, shape-changing environments. We present findings from two studies: (1) a series of speculative design workshops (N=20) that uncovered aspirational visions for these spaces, and (2) a task-based Wizard-of-Oz elicitation study (N=12) that grounded these visions in the challenges of practical interaction. Our workshop findings reveal a complex landscape of user desires, exposing critical tensions between proactive automation and the preservation of user autonomy, and between personalization and public ownership. Our elicitation study reveals a set of core interaction challenges related to multimodal collaboration; and, most critically: suggests the need for a modality-agnostic model of evolving user intent. We conclude with a set of grounded proposals for creating robotic environments that are collaborative and trusted partners in everyday life.

As populations age and technology becomes more pervasive, understanding the alignment between older adults’ values and technology design is paramount. More research is needed to understand how older adults’ living contexts shape their values and the use of technology. To address this, through a multi-context study, we explored how values differ for older adults and how their context of living might influence the adoption and use of technology. We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with older adults in various residential contexts. We show that older adults tend to prioritize the same core values across living contexts, yet how they express values in each context differs. Technology can amplify or inhibit key values. We describe implications for context-responsive technology and design for continuity, to allow older adults to continually uphold important values through technology use.

In this submission, I present my research on the design of technological interventions to enhance self-perceptions of aging (SPA)and the well-being of older adults in India.My work focuses on aging experiences and technology opportunities for older adults in diverse living environments in urban India.These living environments include private homes (aging in place), assisted living townships (retirement homes), and old age institutions.Through interviews, the design of an Aging Reflection Probe Kit and field engagements, I highlight key aspects of SPA among older adults.These include social presence, self-efficacy, activities, age-related transitions, life satisfaction, agency, self-value, age associations, and emotional well-being.I propose a Research through Design (RtD) approach to explore how technological interventions can operationalize SPA theories in HCI and contribute to enhancing older adults' well-being.In addition, I will examine how older adults in diverse living environments adopt and adapt these technologies and how these interventions shape their aging experiences, environments, and social networks.

As the population of older adults increases, there is a growing need for support for them to age in place. This is exacerbated by the growing number of individuals struggling with cognitive decline and shrinking number of youth who provide care for them. Artificially intelligent agents could provide cognitive support to older adults experiencing memory problems, and they could help informal caregivers with coordination tasks. To better understand this possible future, we conducted a speed dating with storyboards study to reveal invisible social boundaries that might keep older adults and their caregivers from accepting and using agents. We found that healthy older adults worry that accepting agents into their homes might increase their chances of developing dementia. At the same time, they want immediate access to agents that know them well if they should experience cognitive decline. Older adults in the early stages of cognitive decline expressed a desire for agents that can ease the burden they saw themselves becoming for their caregivers. They also speculated that an agent who really knew them well might be an effective advocate for their needs when they were less able to advocate for themselves. That is, the agent may need to transition from being unremarkable to remarkable. Based on these findings, we present design opportunities and considerations for agents and articulate directions of future research.

The population of older adults experiencing cognitive decline is growing faster than the number of workers who can care for them. Artificially intelligent (AI) agents could assist these older adults, keeping them in their homes longer. For this to happen, older adults must be willing to adopt and rely on agents. Would they trust an agent that might need to report their decline to others? We conducted a speed dating study exploring the impact of agent affiliation (i.e., who the agent should work for). Our healthy and declining participants reacted positively to the idea of agents supporting them. They particularly recognized how the agent would reduce the burden placed on their family caregivers. They viewed affiliation to be dynamic, shifting from the declining older adult and orienting more to their caregivers over the course of cognitive decline. They envisioned the agent modifying its decision-making process to be like their caregivers’.