## 6 Construction and Principals of Smart Home System for New Elders
### Principals of Building Connectivity  
The natural evolution of the relationship between the elders and their external world is shown in Figure 7. The deep gray circle stands for the elders while the white stands for the external world. We can intuitively see that, in (a), while people are still young, they integrate with the external environment well because of education, works, family responsibility, etc. However, with the growth of age, in (b), older adults will be separated from the world somehow because of the decline of their physical function and social function. In (c), they totally separated from the world and were isolated because of the aging process. This a natural course and indicates why the connectivity establishment is so necessary for the elderly group.  
Figure 7: The relationship separation process of the elders with the external world. Note: *E = The elders; W = The external world.  
According to the analysis above, we consider the principals of building connectivity from two aspects, the first one is, before the connectivity establishment, the smart home can provide equipment and products to strengthen the connection ability of the elderly or to reduce the barrier of relevant services to help senior group connect with the external world easily. Another aspect is that if the connectivity had already been built, then the smart home system could consider how to provide more opportunities for the connectivity establishment and how to improve the quality of established connectivity. According to the discussion above, we can summarize four principals as follows:  
* **Strengthen the elderly's ability to establish connectivity:** As shown in Figure 8a, \"E\" stands for \"the elders\", \"W\" stands for \"the external world\", the dotted circles stand for connectivity scope. This principle starts with the elderly's own ability and focuses on strengthening and improving the physical and psychological capabilities of the elderly to help them expand their connectivity scope. It mainly includes the development of smart products and services to enhance and compensate for the elderly's weaken ability, exercise, and rehabilitation training equipment to help them recover and maintain their abilities to the level that they have not been weakened before.
* **Reduce the difficulties and barriers from products and services aspects to establish connectivity:** As shown in Figure 8b, this principle starts from the smart home system itself which intends to provide a more friendly, intuitive, direct, and systematic control and operation method to reduce the difficulties and barriers for the use of relevant products and services, improve their usability and ease of use to put the elderly in the contactable range.
* **Increase the opportunities of establishing connectivity:** After connectivity establishment, we can think about how to build more connection scenarios which are presented by \"We1-WeN\" in Figure 8c. This principle requires a deep understanding of the essential needs of the elderly, grasping the explicit needs, tapping the hidden needs to create more connectivity opportunities. For example, some elderly people in China always take care of their grandchildren after their retirement, so that the development of smart home can embed early childhood education and entertainment games to enhance intergenerational communication.  
Figure 8: The four principals of building connectivity for the elderly. Note: *E = The elders; W = The external world; We1-N = The external world element.  
* **Improve the quality of the established connectivity:** On the basis of reducing the difficulty of establishing connectivity and creating more connectivity scenarios, then it comes to the optimization of connectivity quality, which is a conversion from quantity to quality, as shown in Figure 8d. It is not only the optimization of smart home functions but also the optimization of experience and content, using intelligent methods to help the elderly live more independently and safely and bring them a sense of wellbeing at home.