ReDDDoT Phase 1: Planning Grant: An AI toolkit for Designing Inclusive Digital Activities for Older Adults

Activities such as puzzles and competitive sports bring immense joy and meaningful experiences that can offer numerous cognitive, physical, and mental well-being benefits. However, a significant portion of 50+ year-old players face barriers that exclude them from engaging in these activities in the digital domain, whether due to technological inaccessibility, representational issues, or content mismatches. People over 50 are often unable to access the benefits of such activities designed for the digital domain. This oversight represents a significant missed opportunity, economically, culturally, and socially. This project will focus on the responsible design, development, and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to address inequitable access to such services and resources for social connection and personal growth for older adults. A tool will be designed to empower 50+ year-old players to engage in digital activities that might not be designed with them in mind or that are created by developers lacking the expertise or resources to support older adults through robust age-friendly features and optimizations. The approach will leverage user-centered and participatory research, which emphasizes the collaboration with 50+ year-old users and industry stakeholders. Research will address accessibility features, activity mechanics, interface design, and social interaction functionalities catered to an aging user base and will aim to automate and augment such elements using cutting-edge AI implementation. The Phase 1 project will build collaborations among key partners and establish design guidelines for responsible, ethical development and deployment of the tool. Objectives include a literature review of 50+ year-old users and AI tools for accessibility, a national open-ended exploratory survey followed by a confirmatory survey, workshop sessions for idea generation and co-design with users, and integration of findings in a comprehensive design document and established community of key stakeholders. Together, these efforts form the foundation of a player-centered AI tool that will make digital activities more accessible for older adults. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.