Peer-to-Peer Variable Service Transactions; Accessibility Needs of Senior Citizens as a Factor for Designing Mobile Applications

Mobile apps have promised to make our lives better in every way possible, whether we like it or not. Now that ‘there’s an app for that’ is the answer to so many questions, smartphones are rapidly becoming a prerequisite to accessing a multitude of services for everything from community involvement to food delivery. While the convenience and new opportunities that mobile apps afford us may be clear, there is a substantial population that is often not considered when building this technology: senior citizens. The technical project will seek to build a mobile application that uses context-aware matching to match people with their peers to fulfil each other’s service needs. The STS research paper examines how the needs of senior citizens may shape the way mobile applications and technology are developed. This discussion will take place within the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) framework of the Social Construction of Technology.