I2HOME will follow a combination of “Design for All” and “Adaptive Design” approach in which all components are designed to be used by everybody, but adaptable to the particular needs of the users.
This approach has the following benefits:
- As people are aging, cognitive impairments subtly become part of their lives, and once occurring, often evolve slowly from slight to more severe. With the proposed approach, the user interfaces of the home appliances can be adapted to the changing needs of their users, as the person’s abilities change during day time and life time.
- As aged people’s lives become more and more fragile, their cognitive abilities typically diminish along with the diminishment of their sensory and physical abilities. Therefore, it is important to develop flexible user interfaces that can be adapted to the needs of their users not only with regard to cognitive impairments, but also with regard to vision, hearing, dexterity, and mobility impairments.
- This approach is the most economic approach of catering for people with disabilities. It allows for the development of one product that can be adapted to the needs of a wide range of user groups, instead of requiring a set of different products, each dedicated to a different user group. As people are aging, their needs are changing constantly. With the proposed approach they can still use the products they have and do not need to buy new products every now and then to accommodate their changing needs.