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This article aims to explore the possibilities and use of a mobile technology‐supported audio annotation system that can be used for attaching free‐formatted audio annotations to physical objects. The solution can help visually impaired people to identify objects and associate additional information with these objects.

A human‐centred design approach was adopted in the system's development and potential end‐users were involved in the development process. In order to evaluate the emerging use cases, as well as the usefulness and usability of the application, a qualitative field trial was conducted with ten visually impaired or blind users.

The findings show that visually impaired users learned to use the application easily and found it easy and robust to use. Most users responded positively towards the idea of tagging items with their own voice messages. Some users found the technology very useful and saw many possibilities for using it in the future. The most common targets for tagging were food items; however, some users had difficulties in integrating the solution with their everyday practices.

This paper presents an innovative mobile phone application with a touch and audio user interface. The actual use cases describe the everyday needs of visually impaired people and this information might be valuable to service providers and technology developers. Also, the experiences gained from these trials can be used when developing software for the visually impaired on other platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the adoption of a multimodal medication management system (MMS) targeted on older people and home care professionals. The paper aims to describe the expectations of the system and the user experience findings from an empirical qualitative field trial. The field trial results are used to discuss how MMSs should be designed in order to improve adherence to medications.

The paper suggests that building a multimodal medicine management system targeted on both older users and home care professionals brings many benefits over electronic medicine dispenser systems or general reminder systems. The research process uses an iterative prototyping approach including phases of requirements analysis and concept design, prototype building and evaluation in a field trial.

The study demonstrates how a system that merely satisfied users during the prototype building phase does not necessarily succeed as well as expected in the field trials. It would be important to consider reasons for medication non-adherence and non-technology factors influencing willingness to adopt new assistive devices in order to promote diffusion of new MMSs at home. The paper also discusses how the different persuasive functionalities of the system addressed patient-centred factors influencing non-adherence and how they could be addressed.

This study has some limitations. The actual adherence to medications was not measured. However, in the future, it will be important to study how the MMSs influence medication adherence. Also, the user experiences of the home care professionals were not studied in the field trials. Home care professionals who were involved in the user studies and trials merely estimated the value for their patients and not for themselves.

This paper analyses design issues relevant when designing systems to help older people manage their medications.