Objectives and Applications
Elderly people are often confronted with social isolation. Friends are getting immobile and the children have moved to other towns. Here information and communication technologies can help to improve new ways of initialization of social relationships. The reservations to use the internet as well as multimedia applications has to be overcome by introducing a game-based approach for establishing social interaction.
The project SilverGame aims to realise and provide attractive and stimulating game-based multimedia applications that foster the social connection and interaction of elderly people with the society. The approach chosen in the project is, that – due to the sharing of the same “virtual” hobbies and passions, such as singing, driving, or dancing – virtual contacts will lead to real social interactions and inclusion.
Moreover, web-based information services will be brought to socially isolated and lonely persons, helping them to be active and joyful in their daily life. On the one hand the users will have fun by using the exploratory gaming mode of different multimedia applications like A) “The multimedia driving simulator for cognitive training”, B) “A virtual silver song club” and C) “Dance and fitness training”. On the other hand the users will get additional web-based information services and contact offers by travelling or dating services that are also integrated into the multimedia environment.
In addition to the “virtual communities” the multimedia environment will help to improve these virtual relationships by offering real events, e.g. the visit of a concert, a song club or a dance group in your region near by. This will help elderly people to get and to stay connected also in real life. All applications will integrate videoconferencing. The telepresence of friends or familiy members provides a realistic impression of the players emotions and introduces a possibility for familiy and friends to exchange their experience during or after gaming. Therefore the multimedia environment provides intuitive interfaces for multimodal user input and navigation, attractive sensor-based serious gaming applications and additional web based information services.
