Designing a travel companion for mature age

Designing travel companions to assist older people is an important outcome of pervasive technologies for assistive environments. Building inclusive systems and interfaces that meet user requirements are reported to be key aspects for acceptance of such supportive technologies. Based on a value centered agenda and a participatory design approach, our explorations with senior travelers reveal in which ways senior travelers relate travel assistance to their lifestyles. Our findings from design research studies showed that, senior travelers associate certain values related to travelling and travel assistance, and they want to see these basic values as integrated visual components of such systems. We discuss the identified core values such as `companionship' `local awareness' and `valuing volunteerism' and their relation to designing a travel assistant.