Social media services are increasingly used to support social interaction among
young people and adults. Older adults however, are often reluctant to use
social media services, and prefer to socialize through face-to-face meetings or
telephone conversations. Moreover, the time periods that family members have
for socializing can be different, as they may have a different schedule for
conducting activities and commitments during the day. These differences in
media preferences and scheduling times for socializing generate a communication
asymmetry that socially isolates older adults and negatively impacts their
physical and mental health. Based on the analysis of a dataset from two
21-weeks deployment studies and nine semi-structured interviews, we conducted
an in-depth formative study trying to understand the communication asymmetry
among older adults and their relatives. The results were used to improve the
design and implementation of SocialConnector, a cloud-based application that
enables older adults to conduct synchronous and asynchronous social
interactions with their relatives. The usability of the new system was
evaluated to determine if its services contribute to address the stated
communication asymmetry. The obtained results provide evidence that the system
can successfully help to alleviate the communication breakdowns led by
asymmetries in media and time preferences among family members.