DOMHO: A Smart Assisted-living Solution for Fragile People

The chapter discusses the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm in the context of assisted living for elderly and fragile people, in the light of the peculiar requirements of such users, both from a functional and a technological perspective. We stress some aspects that are often disregarded by the technical community, such as technology acceptability and usability, and we describe the framework and the phases of the current co-design approaches that imply the active involvement of the final users in the system design process. Thereby, we identify a series of design practices to merge technical and fragile people’s requirements. Our analysis is backed up by the description of DOMHO ,1 a prototypal IoT-based ambient assisted living (AAL) system that embodies most of the concepts described in the chapter, and that has been deployed in an apartment for the co-housing of individuals with disabilities, but was also designed for other environments, like shelter houses for elders. The first DOMHO realization in Treviso (Italy) received large media attention at the regional and national level, confirming its relevance for improving the quality of life of our society.