Desirable System Features
We envision that to ameliorate the loneliness of Mexican elders, our system needs to address the following aspects:
Enable elders and their family to feel close and maintain contact in an entertaining way. We envisioned an electronic family newspaper, which enables users to share information, such as personal memories, anecdotes, or traditions that elders would like to transmit to their younger relatives, or vice versa, the family residing in USA sharing the American customs they have adopted. The information transmitted through the family newspaper, is categorized in different sections. For instance, in the Social section the family may publish photos or a video when the granddaughter graduated from high school. The Entertainment section provides activities for elders, such as a memory game, in which the elder may play with a virtual relative.
Enable the easy capture of digital photos and text. Elders and their family can contribute to build the newspaper, thus we have to consider interfaces suitable for using by the distant family and the elders. We consider that for elders we need to propose an easy way to use system based on a computer with a touch screen. Seniors may use not only digital cameras, but scanners to get images of documents or printed photos they want to publish in the newspaper.
Elders may access and use the system in several places within the home. The family newspaper is presented in a display that can be hanged on any wall of the home’s room of an elder, in which a senior spends most of his time or usually reads the ordinary newspaper.
To clarify how these features are addressed by our system, we elaborated several scenarios of use to illustrate the system’s functionality. The creation of scenarios enabled us to generate and communicate design ideas for our system and to understand better the implications of particular design solutions [Carroll, 2000]. Next, we present one of the use scenarios in which we envision how elders may ameliorate their loneliness through the electronic family newspaper.
Scenario
While Mario is at his school, he loads in the weblog a review he wrote for his father of the latest soccer game of the Mexican league.
The Newspaper Agent is aware that a change was made to the weblog, and updates the family newspaper. The Display agent sounds a notification to advertise that the newspaper has news.
He selects the Sports section because his son Mario has written a review of the latest soccer game of the Mexican league.
As Mr. Valenzuela realizes that his son would like to read interviews to some of the players that were published in yesterday's local newspaper, he scans the note and attaches it to the review.
Finally, the Newspaper Agent realizes of the new change in the weblog, and then, modifies the newspaper.
System design
In order to achieve the system functionality we are proposing to provide an interface for elders and another interface for family members. To serve the needs of elders and facilitate information capture, the system is based on Tablet PC technology. By using a pen elders can access the functionality and input information. In addition, Family members can use the system through any other device with a web browser. This would help the seamless adoption of the system. The following sections describe the system architecture which is based on agent technology.
System Architecture
As illustrated in the figure, the architecture of the electronic family newspaper consists of several layers.
Códice CMS. The system includes a Weblog Content Management System named Codice in which a weblog is created by the family members to load the information they want to publish in the family newspaper through the Codice Web Service’s APIs. A weblog is a term used to refer to a webpage that has frequent postings made to it by the person who created the page and others who are given rights to access the page. The trend of using weblogs is gaining momentum with the introduction of automated publishing tools that facilitate the publishing process and to improve the user experience and usability; Codice was built on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML). Ajax incorporates standards-based presentation (XHTML and CSS), dynamic display and interaction (Document Object Model), data interchange and manipulation (XML and XSLT), asynchronous data retrieval (XMLHttpRequest) and JavaScript binding everything together [Garrett, 2005] . The Ajax engine, allows the user’s interaction with Codice to happen asynchronously.
Códice Web service’s API. To implement our system we are using the Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm that utilizes services as fundamental elements for developing applications [Papazoglou, 2003]. A service is an application that exposes its functionality through an application programming interface (API). In other words, a service is a resource that is designed to be consumed by software rather than by humans. A Web resource is any type of named information object that is accessible through the Web. Therefore a Web service possesses the characteristics of both a Web resource and a service. It is an application that exposes its functionality through an API, and it is a Web resource that is designed to be consumed by software rather than by a human sitting at a browser [Manes, 2003]. Because services provide a uniform and ubiquitous information distributor for wide range of computing devices (such a Tablet PCs, PDAs, cellular telephones, or appliances) and software platforms (e.g., LINUX or Windows), we based our architecture on a Web service API layer in order to interact with Codice CMS programmatically.
Elder’s Client. This layer is the subsystem that enables elders to create and interact with the electronic family newspaper. The main components of this layer were identified as agents since they have attributes that enabled us to cope with the desirable system feature of facilitating the elder interaction with the system. The metaphor used is that of a personal assistant [Maes, 1994] who seamlessly collaborates with the elder in the same work environment. In this case, autonomous agents proactively help elders to perform difficult tasks, such as using the scanner to publish information on the newspaper, represent the relatives when they are not connected to the system, and to communicate with their relatives. We proposed that autonomous agents not only represent the users living abroad, but may act as proxies to the system’s devices (such as Tablet PC, digital cameras or scanners).
Through a Tablet PC, elders can navigate the electronic newspaper and introduce some commands touching the screen. The system also displays a keyboard in order that seniors can easily introduce some text, such as to provide a brief description of a picture. Thus, at the elder’s home the Tablet PC can be located in any place where they would like to read the family newspaper. The Tablet PC acts as a server for the system’s agents that enable elders to visualize the family newspaper or update it.
Relative’s Client. Like the elder’s client, the main components of this layer were identified as agents. The main components since they have attributes that enabled us to cope with the desirable system feature of facilitating the interaction with the system. The electronic family newspaper can be accessed by the elder’s relative from any computer with a web browser.
Family News Paper Agents. This layer allow to the agents turn the web services into proactive entities working as peers to serve the elders or their relatives, representing it in the system, composing dynamically the family news paper.
System Agents
Envisioning our technological solution as a multi-agent system enabled us to implement a scalable and looselycoupled system in which by means of autonomous agents we can add new functionality to the system (i.e. new games), integrate new devices (i.e. video cameras) and other people with whom the user may want to be connected, such as close family friends. The figure illustrates the main system’s agents.
The Newspaper Agent. This agent is aware of new entries in the Codice weblog to build or update the newspaper. To monitor and collect the weblog changes, the newspaper agent was built as a content syndication reader powered by the RSS (RDF Site Summary – formerly called Rich Site Summary) standard which is an application of the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that adheres to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Resource Description Framework (RDF) and is a method for describing news or other Web content that is available for syndication or distribution from an online publisher [Çelikbas, 2004], in this case is accessible through the Codice APIs, which generate an XML when a change occurs in the family newspaper.
Weblog agent. It acts as a proxy to the Codice’s APIs by enabling users to post information into the Weblog. This agent receives information directly from the elder’s relatives or from the agents that help elders to contribute to the family newspaper, such as the Scanner Agent.
Display agent. It is a proxy to the display. It has control of what and when the information is presented in the Tablet PC. For instance, when the display agent is notified that a new entry in the newspaper is available, it automatically opens the family newspaper application.
Scanner Agent. The images and text provided by the elder can be loaded through a scanner. For this, the system provides an agent acting as proxy to these devices. When the elder scans a document or picture, the Scanner Agent sends the image to the Web Log Agent in order to be post on the weblog and then added to the family newspaper.
Memory Game Agent. When the elder joins the Entertainment section, he is presented with several activities, such as the Memory Game. The Memory Game Agent is a server application that monitors the movements of the players, and validates them. It also maintains a database with images and a brief story describing them. If the elder chooses to play, this agent will generate a set of cards with the images posted in the weblog.
Virtual Player Agent. This is a companionship agent. If the elder chooses to play the memory game with one of his relatives, the memory game agent will generate a set of cards containing images related with that particular person. Both, the elder and the virtual player agent will make alternate movements. When a pair of cards is matched, the Virtual Player Agent will display a brief story related with that card’s image. This agent is visually represented by a relative’s photograph. When this agent perceives that the person it represents is connected, it invites him to join the game. Thus, the relative realizes that the elder is thinking about him. If the relative decides to join to the game, the virtual player agent will cede the control to him, and the photograph of the relative will be emphasized to indicate that the real relative is playing the game.
Real Player Agent. If a relative decides to join a game of memory with the elder, the Real Player Agent is started. Then, it is connected to the Memory Game Agent which acts as the game server. The Real Player Agent has an IM client through which the user can maintain contact with the elder while they are playing.
Reminder Agent. To preserve the elder’s relationship with their relatives living abroad, the system provides a context-aware agent that reminds relatives to communicate with the elders. This agent is aware when a user that usually transfers information to the newspaper (i.e. at the beginning of the week), breaks his interaction pattern with the system, then the agent sends a message to the user to remind him to communicate to the elder. For this, the agent is aware of: who accesses the family newspaper, when users access the system, and what activities the users performed (read or post information). By sensing this information, the agent infers which user have lost contact with the elder, and the next time it detects the user’s presence, the agent not only reminds him to communicate, but encourages him to post information to the family newspaper by opening a window requesting information to be publish. The reminder agent posts this information to the weblog on behalf of the user.