Steve Lee :: Blog :: Maavis - simple access to media, web information and video calls for older people

This rather long post introduces my latest project, Maavis.

Maavis i(pronounced 'May Vis') is a new accessibility program that provides greatly simplified access to computer activities including videos, music, photos, web information and video calls. Specifically designed for older people in care who have dementia or related issues, Maavis aims to engage and provide discussion opportunities through being a transparent medium delivering interesting activities. By providing a non threatening 'appliance' that appears to be something of a 'clever TV' it has been designed to allay the fears of those who are alienated by or highly nervious of ICT and the interweb.

You can try Maavis by following the download notes below.

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Background

Maavis was researched and designed by Peter Cudd as part of The Sheffield University's Advanced Care Technologies (ACT) programme. Peter along with Ben Palmer as commercial manager and Simon Judge as technical adviser contracted me to develop software as one of the 'product' outcomes of the the programme. Peter has delivered an excellent example of 'user centred design'; interviewing, creating prototypes and evaluating user response and gathering feedback. A number of people in residential care homes and day centres have used and enjoyed Maavis. Care staff have found it has opened communication and revealed previously unknown user interests and abilities. Users have even shared it with each other with no incentive from staff. Interestingly when one group of keen users found out Maavis was running on a 'computer' they stopped using it.

The Launch event

We launched Maavis to a meeting of members of Quality Care Partnership, a workforce development group in the Health and Social Care Sector who operate over the South Yorkshire area. After Peter presented the ideas and features we let them loose on a number of machines running Maavis and asked for feedback and ideas. It was well received and we were pleased with the positive interest expressed and the number of suggestions and questions. One observation was how the largely non-technically oriented group picked it up and started discussing how they could apply Maavis 'back home'. This group are well placed to virally spread news of Maavis and the meeting also provided an opportunity to introduce Firefox and the ideas behind Open Source to a new audience.

So what exactly is Maavis?

Maavis runs full screen, possibly auto-starting when a user logs into Windows, and presents a few of large 'buttons' that give access to the available activities and have text and/or an image. These buttons present similar screens which provide choices within the activity and a 3rd level presents the activity 'players' themselves. For example chosing 'Video' takes you a screen presenting a choice of videos, and choosing a video takes you to the video player. All the 'players' have few simple controls again using the large buttons. Maavis works best with a touch screen which provides natural and rugged interaction. Any pointing device can be used and keyboard and switch access are planned.

The activities are:

• photo slideshow - with pause to encourage discussion
• video - local home movies are popular
• music - listen and discus old favorites
• info - simplifed web access
• call - video calls to friends and family

( We deliberately never mention the 'c' or 'w' words, computers or web )

VOIP video calls provide access to free or cheap calls anywhere to relatives and friends, a massively simplified interface to Skype (at least for now). A contact button with a photo on is activated to make a call and the video runs full screen. 3 large clear buttons allow you to end a call or change the volume. In addition to making outgoing video calls incoming calls can be answered using a button on each screen that displays the callers name if they are in the users contact list.

It's important that busy care staff with limited IT skills can set up Maavis so we made configuration simple by allowing thumbnail images and media to be copied to a set of predefined folders in My Documents (Documents in Vista). Maavis automatically presents the folder contents to the user with no further configuration. Lists of web URI's can also be provided for direct access to online media. Contacts are setup by naming an image file with the contact's 'display' name and skype id. We have plans to extend this and make media provision simpler by allowing  packaging of media for easy deployment and installation, possibly Maavis itself or another Firefox add on.

The title that appears on the top of each screen can be spoken on display and when touched. A simple settings program lets you configure this as well as choosing an alternative black and white theme.

If we've done our job well then you will be thinking 'is that it?'. The answer is an emphatic 'yes'. The whole point is simple non-threatening access for users and simple setup of media by busy facilitators with limited IT skills or interest.

Who uses Maavis?

• The end users that Maavis directly targets are people in residential care homes and day centres who possibly have dementia. However as noted below there are wider applications.
• Facilitators are care staff or friends who provide media and configure Maavis with limit tech skills
• Technical Facilitators have some basic web development skills and can create new screens or colour themes.
• Developers can create more complex screen behaviours using the Maavis platform
• Core developers can work on the fundamental services of the platform. In fact as Maavis builds on Mozilla technology (is currently a Firefox add-on) developers have full access to a rich array of display and communications services.

There are exciting applications for people with learning difficulties, physical disabilities, youngsters and in kiosks. Indeed Maavis will be useful in application where a ultra simple access to media and Internet infomration and communication is required. However we need to be very careful to stick to the key design requirements of non intimidating simplicity, and not veer into 'bloatware' terratory.

Future developments
 
It is important that Maavis develops through meeting user needs, through collaboration of user, facilitators, developers and others. So naturally Mavis is an Open Source project. The University are working on ways to monetise it through services, not least as it was partially funded through European Objective One Funding so must help regional development.

We have released a Beta which has a few rough edges and gaps, but despite the extremely tight timescales it is usable and meets some of the desired ease of setup by facilitators. There are a lot of ideas for improving Maavis and making it even simpler and more effective so we are now actively exploring further funding opportunities so that more people may enjoy using it.

Technology

When I was offered the contract I was excited by both the project and the opportunity to try out the longstanding idea that Mozilla technology will make a great platform for accessibility projects and Assistive Technology. The Maavis spec centered around media and information access as well as communications meaning good local and interweb facilities. It was also clear than eventual integration with an online service would be important for easy use and the team expressed a strong interest in collaborative development through Open Source. This all pointed directly to using Mozilla and creating an open 'framework' that would allow anyone with some web skills to contribute to the project at Technical levels.

It's early days yet but I think I have had some success, though there's plenty of scope for improvement. The very short timescales coupled with problems integrating reliably with Skype, media plugins and even rather 'pulling against' Mozilla's page rendering all mean some code needs a spring clean. However as open source projects release early it is reasonably well developed.

So the technologies are:

• Firefox extension - proivdes access to the rich Moziila platform. A XULRunner app would probably be more sensible but times were tight. The choice leads to some profile management issues.
• Javascript DOM scripting for behaviour and CSS for appearance
• XUL page descriptions
• XBL custom elements for buttons, slide show, audio, video
• XPCOM components for SAPI synthetic speech, James Boston's nsIProcess replacment (nsIProcessManager),  master volume control and command line options.
• Outfox python server - a fork to control Skype via the Skype4Python API and allows future expansion possibilities
• VLC media player for audio and video, local or remote (streaming and much more if needed)
• Inno setup declarative installer creator (with scripting when needed)
• Skype can be used for Video calls

SVG was planned for better visuals but has not been implemented yet.

Find out more

Over the next few days the Maavis user website will open and will eventually include documentation and community features.  I've opened access to the development project 'forge' on Assembla (though it needs a little updating). Developers can also view most of the source code in the Windows installer.

Download and Installation

In order to explore Maavis you can download the Maavis 0.1.1 installer and a sample media set that should be unpacked into 'My Documents' (XP) or 'Documents' (Vista).

When you install Firefox, VLC and skype you can untick the 'run now' option for their installers. If you have older version of these you should upgrade using the supplied installers. For VLC you must select Mozilla plugin which is unchecked by default.

Note Maavis runs in its own Firefox Profile so you should make sure Firefox is closed before running Maavis. Otherwise you won't see it. If you have used Firefox before after running you may get a prompt to select a profile. Select 'default' unless you are using profiles.

If you want to use Skype please note the following

• Install the version of Skype supplied with Maavis even if another version is already installed
• On Vista you must run the Maavis installer as adminstrator or run the Skype installer from 'program files/Maavis' manually.
• When you first run maavis the windows firewall will prompt asking for your permission which you should grant.
• Skype also asks you for permisison for MaavisSkypeServer to access it. To grant it you have to click the popup link fast before it vanishes and then find the link at the top of the Skype window and then select yes in the dialog. Not the best UI design.