INTEGRATING VOICE-ACTIVATED TECHNOLOGY IN SENIOR LIVING
rolled it out to fi ve other communities. As residents begin to use the devices,
“we run six weeks of workshops covering diff erent facets of Alexa,” said the center’s president Kari Olson. “That brings people together, and it creates a forum where peo- ple can share their excitement about what they are learning, which in turn further strengthens Alexa adoption.” Front Porch also takes the time up front
to make the voice device personal, as a way to encourage resident adoption. “We ask people what they like to do on the internet, what their hobbies and interests are, and then we pick the initial skills they can access through Alexa,” Olson said. “If you like a radio station from Philadelphia, we would set up that station as part of your profi le for Alexa. We would use the calling features of Alexa to enable you to connect to loved ones, or confi gure Alexa to have the books you like to read up and ready.” At Benchmark, Elalamy has learned that
a successful voice deployment also depends a lot on how you make the pitch. “People aren’t attracted to the technology,
but they are attracted to services,” he said. “If you say you have Google Home, they don’t care or they don’t see the value. If you tell them they can call for help and you’ll automatically be able to respond – that’s in- teresting to them. They want to know what the technology can do for them.” What Alexa can do for them—at least
in the most obvious sense—is tell them what’s for dinner. But who’s going to tell Alexa? Executives who’ve gotten over the fi rst hurdle, resident acceptance, will likely turn their attentions next to the fi ner tech- nological points. How, exactly, does a voice deployment get done?
How it happens Content is an obvious question mark here.
Residents can ask a world of questions and Alexa will have the information readily at hand, thanks to its cloud-based, internet-ac- cessible database. But local, community-spe- cifi c information has to be programmed in. Catalanotto expects to assign the task to
a communications coordinator who already is responsible for producing menus and ac-
tivity lists. “We are already doing it weekly for our in-house TV channel and our digital posters, so it really isn’t adding that much extra work,” she said. Civitas relies on its voice provider, VoCo, to help with the heavy lifting. An administra- tive assistant produces a monthly calendar, and VoCo uploads it into the voice system. VoiceFriend off ers a similar service. “We
can take the monthly activities calendar and meal specials and have someone in our support group put in all that information,” Baron said. “In most communities the schedule of activities or meals will repeat, so you can set that up once and it stays on the calendar. If there is an exercise group that meets every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 9 a.m., you put that in once and it stays there until you change it.” Some early adopters aren’t satisfi ed with
what still amounts to a manual process for updating information in the voice applica- tion. “You should have the same calendar application that you are already using, and you connect the voice assistant to that sys- tem. Then you don’t have to tell it anything, it just knows to go to that application and read from it when people ask questions,” Elalamy said. Right now, systems typically don’t interface that easily or that well. Even if the process gets easier, there’s still
an added step or an added responsibility here for someone. Whether a community inputs information directly into the system or relies on a vendor to do the weekly up- dates, someone needs to pull together the data and ensure its accuracy. Still, there are other technical challenges to consider. Voice assistants typically connect to
the internet, so there will be a bandwidth requirement for any community looking to do a widespread deployment of these devices. This has proven to be an issue at The Village at Gainesville, where the rollout of future smart apartments will depend in part on the availability of an internet con- nection. “Our community is implementing Wi-Fi everywhere, and that isn’t 100 percent complete yet. We have 104 acres in multi- ple neighborhoods, so that will be a two-to three-year process,” Catalanotto said. Others point to the logistics of adding
A resident at Park Creek Independent Living, a Civitas community, engages with an Amazon Echo Dot. 34 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
a new device as a potential complicating factor. A community may decide to deliv-
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