SMART Thinking attempts to be an impartial provocative educational research website. Its principle concern is with the appropriate and acceptable proactive use of telecare, assistive, Telemedicine and "smart home" (home automation, domotic etc) technology to meet the need of and enhance the quality of life of people with disabilities and older people. This technology needs to meet the real needs of the person as well as be dependable.

SMART Thinking's main purpose is the design of relevant, acceptable dependable and appropriate assistive networked technology to assist disabled and older people within and outwith their domestic environments.

The site is maintained and written by Guy Dewsbury, a 'mild dyslexic' who works for Barnet Council as their Telecare Co-ordinotor and who previously worked for Lancaster University's Computing department (www.comp.lancs.ac.uk) as a Sociologist. Guy's other previous experience/history includes brief fore's into Nursing, Teaching, Education, Researching Community care issues (his CV is here). Guy has worked for a number of universities in the past including Lancaster, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Robert Gordon (Aberdeen), as well as his current placement at Lancaster.

Guy's main passion is designing systems that meet needs, desires and expectations, putting people first in the equation and the technology a distant second. Guy's concern is not just the needs of the most obvious people, but of all stakeholders such that the design should enable the person to benefit from a better quality of life. Although Guy takes a person-centered 'one-to-one' approach to design, his work is heading towards generic models which can be tweaked to the individuals who will use it.

In order to understand the needs of a person/group, it is important that we look beyond the basic standardised "needs" test, that just consider how a person performs a series of actions; into understanding their activity patterns in the dwelling and how they will use the technology in real life. The residents views on what they want from the system can be more informative than the people who care for them, hence Guy (as others at Lancaster do) has adopted and adapted version of cultural probes to uncover user views on their activities and social world. This seems to work!

SMART Thinking attempts to be proactive by using modern technology to disseminate knowledge about this form of technology and its appropriate usage within the health and housing sectors as well as the academic fields.

SMART Thinking currently is undertaking work for a number of health and social care providers and is assisting in determining if home technology is appropriate for individuals who have been in long term residential care who are now returning to the community throughout the UK.

SMART Thinking is evolving and like any evolution would enjoy hearing from anyone interested in the application of this technology. So don't be shy... ask Guy!