Titulo Estágio
Maximizing inclusiveness and accessibility for cognitive enhancement apps
Áreas de especialidade
Engenharia de Software
Local do Estágio
SHINE 2Europe (atualmente em teletrabalho)
Enquadramento
There is a large body of compelling evidence that digital health technologies are being increasingly improved and upscaled with the aim of allowing older adults to maintain functional independence throughout ageing, a process known as healthy ageing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020), healthy ageing "is about creating the environment and opportunities that enable people to be and do what they value throughout their lives". It is a process of maintaining and developing their functional abilities, which could mean to meet their basic needs, maintain their mobility, enable the possibilities to build and keep relationships, promote continuing learning and cognitive enhancement, and make decisions as well as contributions to the society. This concept evokes the intrinsic relationship existing between the individuals and their environment, with the “digital ecosystem” being one agent to facilitate healthy aging.
These digital health technologies built to promote healthy aging are expected to mitigate the socio-economic effects of population aging and improve the quality of life of older people. Amongst several existing digital solutions, most are directed to support the older adults in the adoption or maintenance of a desired behavior (coaching role); or offer tools/interfaces aimed to provide individuals the information needed to promote that behavior (applications). There is an extensive range of digital resources aimed at these purposes, but most are not adequately assembled, dispersed and not adequately centralized to offer the best solutions to older adults, in a user-friendly interface that augments the accessibility and effective advantage taken by using these resources. It is well known that providing older adults with a rich and attractive environment will enhance the probability of its use, and the growing interaction with apps and other health technology resources, may improve their executive functions in dimensions of episodic memory and processing speed (Quinn, 2018; Chan et al., 2016), helps them to enhance their logical and critical thinking when they play some problem-solving games (Charness & Boot, 2016).Being able to offer this environment can indeed be “game changing” when speaking about preventing cognitive decline.
Following the policies of an Internet of Things (IoT) based approach (Konstantinidis et al., 2015), this project aims to explore the advantages of merging and developing a set of applications /games in a user-friendly interface as means to answer accessibility, attrition, usability issues related with the effectiveness of these resources to promote healthy ageing.
About the company:
SHINE 2Europe aims to promote inclusive communities to all citizens, by delivering services and support to the implementation of tech-Savvy, Healthy and INclusivE solutions (SHINE) around Europe. SHINE is born with a clear vision of fostering societal growth and inclusiveness, by sharing good practices, promoting active networking and developing relevant projects in targeted areas.
SHINE's main goal is to promote inclusive societies for all. This includes gender, race, age, personal opinions and lifestyles, literacy, environment and sustainability, with shared responsibility between all citizens and within democratic values.
Bringing innovation, digital solutions, social inclusion and a greener environment is often mainly dependent on policy change. SHINE’s team has a solid experience and a wide network of contacts both in national and international contexts, that ensure the better way through to build policy claims.
SHINE also works on the creation, development or adaptation of simple IT solutions is also one of our key assets. Whenever it makes sense to provide an integrated solution for a societal challenge that can be adequately addressed by a digital product, e.g. an app, a game or a platform, SHINE has the expertise to deliver it too. What are the gains? We can talk both languages and approach the different worlds - technological, societal and research and bridge the gap that so many times makes innovation fail in the final run.
We have currently 16 ongoing international projects, mainly funded by Horizon Programme, Erasmus, and COST.
Objetivo
The candidate to this internship will join a very strong and competitive company in the field of technological solutions for communities who are inclusive, accessible, and widely spread. The rich research and network environment provided by this company team will enable the candidate to improve their technical, management and networking skills.
The general goal is bringing together several interactive resources in an easy-to-use interface on the web, that could then be used by the general public in a more intuitive manner, enabling its management, scalability and exploitation.
In concrete, we aim at reaching the following goals:
- Merge a set of validated health helper resources in a friendly web interface.
- Develop ready to use apps to complement the cognitive tools already available at the interface
- Develop android versions of the given resources, to widen its implementation.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
Plano de trabalhos Semestre 1 (Alunos de MDM: 16h/s no DEI, Alunos de MSI: 32h/s no DEI)
• Levantamento do estado da arte.
• Levantamento de requisitos
• Estudo de soluções tecnológicas a adotar
• Elaboração do plano de desenvolvimento.
• Design da web-based application
• Design das aplicações para treino cognitivo
• Preparação dos protótipos para demonstrações internas.
• Documentação intermédia do estágio.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
Plano de trabalhos Semestre 2 (Tempo inteiro 40h/s)
• Implementação das aplicações
• Testes funcionais.
• Testes de usabilidade.
• Avaliação de requisitos não funcionais.
• Documentação final de estágio.
Condições
The eligible student will have at disposal all the necessary computational platforms, tools and devices. He will work within a team that is working on related issues and will provide hands-on training to the student in relation to the area of work.
It might also be possible to ensure funding or agree a remuneration with the student, depending on proven capability and tasks to be developed.
Observações
Interest and/or knowledge on HTML, CSS, ASP.net; C#, PHP, databases (MySQL/SQL), drawing tools (Photoshop/CorelDraw/others), UI (?) and esthetical sense.
Co-supervisores: Ana Rita Silva anaritaess@fpce.uc.pt e Carina Dantas carinadantas@shine2.eu
Orientador
Luís Dias
luisdias@shine2.eu 📩