84 6 DesigningBlended Reality Spaces Increased mobility means that people’s family members and friends may be widely dispersed across geographic distances. This has brought about the situation that elderly people in modern societies are increasingly living alone and may be insufficiently stimulated, both physically and psycho-socially (Waterworth et al. 2009a). This may then accelerate cognitive decline, creating a vicious circle of decline and reduced social and mental activity. More and more elderly people are suffering loneliness and confusion as a result (Waterworth et al. 2009b). Even though appropriate technology could help ease these problems, older people are actually largely ignored in the design of new information and communication technology, which further contributes to their isolation in a world where everyone else is becoming more and more connected through technology. This situation brings serious concerns and negative impacts not only on elderly people but also onthosecaringfortheelderly,suchasfamilymembersandhealthservicestaff.The potential of new interactive technologies to maintain health and independent living could in principle also improve some cognitive functions in the elderly. Yet only a limited number of experiments have been conducted. What are missing are designs for commontechnologiesthatcanbeusedbyallpeople,includingtheveryold,and this is where human-experientialdesign could have a key role to play. One trend in recent healthcare is the transfer of nursing care from traditional hospitals to the patient’s home. Elderly people are increasingly treated and taken care of in their own homes. But health services cannot keep up with the demand for home visits and day-care. This puts new types of demand on the staff and increases the importance of well functioning communication and collaboration betweenelderlypeopleat home,carepersons,andclosefamilyandfriendsinorder to give better health care. The needs of secondary end users (the carers of the old people) should be considered carefully, but the focus on the elderly as primary user has to be kept central. The primary users could, for example, be provided with a user-sensitive ICT-basedhomeenvironmentthatsupportsapersonalizedcareprocessbydetecting, communicating, and meaningfully responding to relevant states, situations, and activities of the user. So the users might enhance their mental and physical wellbeing with the ICT-based home environment. It should be possible to prevent andmanagechronicconditionssuch ascognitiveimpairmentordementiabygentle andconsistentsocialstimulationandtimelyresponsetodetectedstates,situationsor activities, all via appropriately designed technology and communication networks. Secondary users caring for the elderly, such as family members or close friends would need to actively connect to the network and access information on the person’s wellbeing and activities (if approved by the elderly) to get a picture of the elderly person’s state and to allow for a much better tailored and timely response, attention and care. Figure 6.5 is a schematic outline of our approach in the AGNES project (Peter et al. 2013): a context-sensitive home-based interactive system, in which humans utilize background information from ambient media and by means of tangible objects without being disrupted in their foregroundtasks.