Seamlessly Mediation of Social Interaction Services Respecting Communication Preferences

Abstract

The diversification and evolution of social media tools conveys users to adopt new systems and use new features of existing ones. Although this dynamism is suitably addressed by digital natives, it usually limits the technology adoption capability of digital immigrants, e.g., older adults, who react more slowly and with less confidence to the introduction of new computing systems. In order to support digital immigrants to deal with such a challenge, this paper proposes a ubiquitous system that mediates the communication supported by client applications and regular social interaction media such as, Gmail, WhatsApp, and Telegram. The system, named Social Message Translator, translates social media messages in both directions and self-adapts the process according to the behavior of end-users. Thus, it deals with the digital diversification of the former and also with the changes in the social media preferences of end-users. Consequently, digital immigrants are able to perceive as useful the supporting technology for longer time spans. The correctness of the message translation system was evaluated using a laboratory case study. The obtained results were highly positive, opening several opportunities to use this translator in several social interaction scenarios.