News

[Announcement] Maria Wolters' seminar: Designing Reminder Systems for Older People - What is the Context?

News Announcements Published July 03, 2012

Dr. Maria Wolters from the University of Edinburgh will give a talk at KAIST on July 16th as follows:

Title: Designing Reminder Systems for Older People - What is the Context?
Speaker: Dr. Maria Wolters, University of Edinburgh
Date: July 16 (Monday), 2012
Time: 1:00pm ~ 2:00pm
Place: Ahn Young-Kyung Seminar Room, CS Building (#4420, E3-1)
Host: Jong C. Park (park@cs.kaist.ac.kr)

Abstract: In the MultiMemoHome project, we aim to develop guidelines for designing acceptable and effective reminders for supporting older people who live in the community. An important part of the design is to consider the context in which reminders are delivered. Is the person who needs the reminders living alone or with family? How large is their social network? How close are they to other people who could help? What technology do they have in their home that could be used to display reminders? What sensory and cognitive impairments do they have that might preclude reminder use? We will look at those questions using data from the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing, a large-scale study of thousands of older people in the UK. The talk will conclude with suggestions for relevant cross cultural comparisons.

Biography: Maria Wolters is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Speech Technology Research at the University of Edinburgh. The goal of her research is to improve the accessibility and functionality of voice-based interaction. She is also interested in the quantitative analyses of large quantities of language data and in the acoustic analysis of disordered speech.

She studied at the University of Bonn, where she attained an MSc in Computer Science in 1997 and a PhD in Communication Research and Phonetics in 2001. She went on to join the University of Newcastle and Queen Margaret University as a clinical phonetician, before moving to the University of Edinburgh in late 2004. She is currently a research fellow on the MATCH project.