Moore’s law drives the continuously increasing power of technologies and systems in consumers’ homes. As their capabilities increase, we are moving from considerations about what can we do towards thinking about what do we need or would like to do. Simultaneously, driven by the same underlying factors, the trend is away from stand-alone devices towards systems of devices connected together in the home and to the rest of the world by pervasive networking technologies. Connected systems bring a new set of issues, with multiple users all needing different things from the system. The challenge for HCI is to make these systems useful, usable and attractive to all users. This paper explores this issue in the context of the elderly population.
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