More Ben Goldacre on Greenfield (and Sigman)

Here is more from Ben Goldacre on the unsupported claims of Susan Greenfield and Aric Sigman. Some of the references may be useful to you.

http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/

NewZealand digital content

I came across NZ digital content website.
"DigitalNZ is an initiative that aims to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use. This includes content from government departments, publicly funded organisations, the private sector, and community groups."

Some aspects of the design of the website strike me as positive, in particular the use of large fonts and large clickable areas. In the "showcase" section they also include a timeline, which however didn't seem to work too well... images or text didn't seem to appear in the pop-up boxes.

They also have a "memory maker" in the showcase section on page 2.

Go to http://www.digitalnz.org/

Interesting commentary in the Guardian (from December)

"This looming ageing crisis needs some grown-up solutions"

You may have seen this commentatry already... Jackie Ashley made a couple of interesting points, e.g. housing, lack of social support

Read here

Paper: Older Adults' Motivated Choice for Technological Innovation: Evidence for Benefit-Driven Selectivity

This journal article has been referenced to from the book:"Designing for older adults" by Fisk A. et al. I think this paper is very interesting since it sheds light on the reasons why older people don't use new technology. "That is, when asking the question of why older adults may not use a particular type of technology, the answer is not because the costs are too high; the answer is because the benefits of that technology are not apparent to the older adults."

Melenhorst, A., Rogers, W., Bouwhuis, D. run 18 focus groups in the USA and Netherlands.

Psychology and Aging
Issue: Volume 21(1), March 2006, p 190–195

Just found a project which allows users to ‘interact with all aspects of Great Britain’s past from around the world.’

Link: http://www.pasttimesproject.co.uk/

Perhaps it would be worth asking them if you can study their users?

Paper: Understanding collective content: Purposes, Characteristics and Collaborative Practices

I feel the paper is very relevant to the idea that successful social interaction is centered around 'objects' (e.g pictures or interests) which can be shared by everybody. To quote from section 5.3 "Collective content was observed to have a significant role in
facilitating communication and social interaction in the studied
communities. It was an ice-breaker of discussion in the less active
communities, and a catalyst and evoker of social interaction and
nurturer of the sense of community in the active communities."

2009 Paper by Thomas Olsson "Understanding collective content"

Let me know your views

Supporting older web users - a global view

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: There seem to be a lot of people over 65 accessing the Internet. The popular internet activities are confirmed with our survey.

Supporting older web users - a global view

View more presentations from w4a.

Can Susan Greenfield be trusted?

Following our discussion, Marianne, I looked up <"susan greenfield" controversy> in Google. It turned up some quite interesting things. Ben Goldacre’s contribution (in the first result), http://neuronarrative.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/four-authors-respond-to-the-social-networking-controversy/, contains some interesting links.

Not taking sides (yet) – just think this needs looking into.

CNN article: "All in the Facebook family"

"Let's face it, kids that age aren't really interested in talking to people my age very much. It's more, 'Hi grandma how are ya? ... Bye!' " she said with a laugh. "That's basically what I get from my grandkids, so if I can engage them through just a little bit of chit-chat [online], it's a lot more than I can get over the phone."

This is similar to what I found with one of my in-depth interviews recently. The person I spoke to said it was an easy and friendly way of interacting with his grandchildren.

Read CNN article

Placing an ad in Facebook

When you place an ad in Facebook you can see the number of people by age (based on the last 30 days usage) accessing Facebook.

I tried this out and found that Facebook stops at the age of "64".
According to this tool there are:

• 22,620 - 63 to 64 year old Facebook users in London and 50 miles
• 119,160 - 63 to 64 year old Facebook users in the UK
• 375,360 - 60 to 64 year old Facebook users in the UK

If I were to place the ad (for the suggested bidding price) it will have an estimated 97 clicks a day.

Family life set to change dramatically in the next decade

The family and parenting institute writes on 30th Nov 2009:

• Fathers roles are set to change dramatically over the next decade; this change follows the shift in women's roles since the 1950s
• With the break down of the nuclear family, the whole family - siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents - and particularly the way couples interact - is to be important to securing increased child well-being in the future
• Our ageing population is going to dominate the family policy agenda with caring for the elderly one of the top concerns for families.

Changing family forms are producing a so-called 'beanpole' effect, with more generations alive at the same time, but with fewer aunts and uncles etc.

Read the full press release

Building a Society for All Ages

Building a Society for All Ages is the Government's strategy (July 2009) and it builds on the 2005 strategy "Opportunity Age" which has according to the HM Government website largely implemented.
The new strategy sets out "a programme of action to support the changes for individuals, for families, for the workplace and economy and for public services and communities."

Changes in law made saving for retirement fairer and easier than before and the current Equality Bill will outlaw unjustified discrimination on the basis of age in the provision of goods and services. The Care and Support Green Paper addresses the care needs of an ageing population.
The strategy takes into account that we have a demographic change and more older old. So the government also calls for a "shift in attitude and behaviour across society so that old age is no longer perceived as a time of dependency and exclusion".

On the government's website they continue listing services they offer which apparently help people of all ages. They mention the "new interactive 'one stop shop' for helping people planning ahead" (I haven't found this one yet). There is a new "Active at 60" package (which includes free swimming). To increase participation for these activities they plan to provide a "all-in one card". There are also plans (and a £20 million learning transformation fund) to offer learning opportunities in later life.

They published a "Families and Relationships Green Paper" in Nov 09 - I still need to find the paper. To make sure different generations have the opportunity to keep in touch with each other they run digital inclusion projects, targeted at giving people in sheltered housing access to new technology. (Here I'm quite surprised - are people who live in sheltered housing not likely to have not have less close family?).

There was a "grandparents summit" in Nov 09. Topics for discussion included how families and childcare services can adapt to better meet the needs of grandparents, the impact of combining employment with care of their grandchildren and ways to provide more information to grandparents more effectively.

The government currently funds 12 intergenerational projects across the country to break down barriers and challenge negative stereotypes. (I still need to find out about those). Efforts will be made to mix older and retired with younger workers in order to pass on knowledge and experience. To ensure mobility the "driving for life programme" will be in place.

Link to the government's strategy.

The Care and Support Green Paper includes a health prevention package and it will raise the focus on preventative services for conditions that often affect people in later life, including footcare, falls prevention, continence care, depression and arthritis.

Link to the Care and Support Green Paper.

And there is a conference "Ageing Population 2010" which takes place on 25th February 2010 to discuss the government's strategy and to hear views from different parties involved e.g. Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation.
Link to the conference.

Older users and digital archives

I was in a meeting today with (among others) Sue Thexton, visiting professor at Middlesex, who recently wrote a report for Skillset* about Digital Archiving. It includes this relevant paragraph: 

5.2.2 Older demographic of internet usage
‘Silver surfers’ are a large demographic that is potentially very attractive for archive holders. As internet penetration has [increased] the demographic profile has shifted towards older users. Nielsen//NetRatings data from April 2007 show that over 50s (who make up 41% of the UK population) now account for nearly 30% of all time spent on the internet. And over 65 ‘silver surfers’ spend more time online per active user, at nearly 42 hours per month, than any other age group. These are a group that would be very interested in interacting with and viewing archive material as it reflects their own life. But it’s not just the silver surfers that should be focused on, after all there is 70% of the internet users in this country are younger than 50. The technology allows archives to appeal to younger audiences too, to engage them more with history and also to work harder to appeal to a more culturally divers audience.

The complete report is at http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_12283.pdf?6

* Middlesex is a Skillset Academy.

5 tips on successful social networking

This blog entry describes a presentation by Jyri Engstrom (google - social applications) from 12 June 2007 where he provides us with 5 tips on how to design successful social web applications.
Jyri approached the first crucial design question from an object-centered sociology perspective. (Think Bruno Latour - actor-network, though I still need to read more about this to make a proper connection, I have not seen him being cited in this context very much)

1. Define the object round which your service is built.

Jyri gives the examples of flicker and dogster.

2. Define the key verbs for that object

For ebay it's "buy and sell".

3. Make the object shareable!

Widgets to enable people to share objects.

4. To grow your userbase, think about what can you provide in terms of a gift users can offer their friends

Skype offered 2 free headsets (one for the person and one for the friend)

5. Work out a business model where you charge the publisher, not the spectators

Try to offer it for free. Frequently employed business model: basic service is free, but for more features you use can pay a premium.

Read blog here

Book: Save As... Digital Memories

Save As... Digital Memories is an expensive book edited by Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins and Anna Reading. Might be useful or interesting at least in part. Another one for the library, I think. Published by Palgrave Macmillan [link to book]