Voice assistants have long been helping us with many daily tasks. Both our experience and some scientific studies tell us this. But in the project Voice4Health, conducted by the Research Center of the Catholic University EngageMinds HUB in collaboration with DataWizard and with the contribution of Amazon, there is something more, because we went to investigate with scientific instruments whether the use of these devices by elderly people , in addition to facilitating many daily activities, can contribute to improving their quality of life. And the results are more than encouraging, albeit preliminary. In fact, the study shows that three out of four people see their well-being increase, both in general terms and from an emotional and relational point of view. Not only that: the people who participated in the experiment – guided by a scientifically validated research protocol that saw the use of the Alexa voice assistant – reported a significant reduction in psychological stress and an improvement in their personal aptitude for the use of technology.
“These are aspects of great interest – underlines Professor Guendalina Graffigna, Professor of Health and Consumer Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan-Cremona and director of the EngageMinds HUB – just think of how the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated, when not imposed, a paradigm shift in family relationships through the use of remote connections, but also due to the growing digitalization of the public administration which implies, with the SPID, the creation of one’s own digital identity “. The research involved 60 senior and elderly men and women (between 65 and 80 years old) who received an Alexa device and were interviewed four times: two weeks before the start of the trial, just before the start, at the end. of the two weeks of experimentation and after another fifteen days, as a follow-up action.
After the experiment, the sense of loneliness decreases
If, as mentioned, 75% of the sample declared at the end of the experiment that they had seen an increase in their state of well-being, it is necessary to better investigate in what sense this happened. And the EngageMinds HUB study finds, for example, that the positive response to the question “I felt calm and relaxed” using a voice assistant increased dramatically over the entire eight-week period. “From an emotional point of view – explains the researcher Serena Barello – 52% of the interviewees declared that they had maintained a high state of well-being even in the weeks following the experiment. The impact on social relationships is also remarkable – continues Barello – because after the experimentation, as many as 62% of the interviewees had the feeling of feeling less alone and 98% expressed a greater desire to communicate with other people using new technologies ” .
La prova: Smart display Amazon Echo Show 8
by Bruno Ruffilli
The voice assistant is “smart” even for the elderly
This first experimentation, which will have to be consolidated with randomized studies and on a larger sample, has led to positive results, also highlighting the ease of use of the voice assistant used in the research. In fact, with just the use of the voice, it is possible for example to activate a reminder, play music and videos, listen to the latest news and always stay in touch with relatives and friends. What’s more: for the entire sample of people who participated in the experiment, using this device was fun and would recommend its use to friends and family.
“Every day at Amazon we work to create devices and services that make the lives of our customers easier and safer, thanks to an increasingly inclusive technology, such as that offered by Alexa – said Gianmaria Visconti, Alexa Country Manager. In this sense, the research results are undoubtedly very encouraging. Seeing that Alexa can represent a concrete help for the elderly population, reducing their sense of loneliness and making some actions of their daily life easier, is an additional incentive to do better and to preserve in our daily commitment “.
“We were the first promoters of this project towards Amazon Europe and the research data we analyzed was really very significant”, said Riccardo Emmolo, Digital Strategist of Datawizard, a consulting company on Digital Health that co-designed and implemented the experiment together with EngageMinds HUB.
The secret garden
“From a methodological point of view – explains Professor Giuseppe Riva, Professor of General Psychology at the Catholic University – the scientific matrix that gave rise to this research derives from another protocol called the Secret Garden (www.covidfeelgood.com) whose results are already published internationally. It is an immersive video that simulates a natural environment and is aimed at promoting relaxation and self-reflection. All this – continues Riva – has been integrated with a series of exercises that exploit the functions of the voice assistant used in the study: games, music, video calls, questions and answers, news, etc. During the first week of experimentation, the people involved were then invited to perform some exercises, based on applications of the voice assistant; while in the second week they were left free to use the device as they saw fit. As long as they recorded actions and sensations in a diary, which was then analyzed by the researchers of the Catholic University ”.
Artificial intelligence
Dialect, cooking and jokes: this is how Alexa learns Italian
by Bruno Ruffilli
.