Exploring Smart Furniture’s Benefits and Use Cases for End Users and Care Professionals

The integrated functionalities of smart furniture can support both caregivers and their clients, improving safety, comfort, and efficiency. This article describes three smart furniture prototypes which have been co-developed earlier with end users, and studies their potential benefits as well as further development needs (second iteration) by an online survey. In this iteration round the aim was to involve the healthcare professionals, as well as new users from different countries. In total 21 healthcare professionals and 19 end-users from six European countries responded to the survey. The results indicate that the presented prototypes: smart chair, smart mirror and smart table could help the users as well as health care professionals in multiple ways, but further development is still needed. Health monitoring, activation and motivation, entertainment as well as assisting in daily living were clearly seen as potential use cases for the prototypes. Seniors were often considered as the end-user in the open-ended answers. The survey with demonstration videos was found a suitable tool in user need mapping in one of the iterations of the user-centered development process.