The aim of The Butler Project is to reduce the technological gap that separates the elderly people from the computerized world where we live nowadays. It also tries to encourage their curiosity, satisfaction and decrease their feeling of isolation. The system has as its main objective to work in a primary intervention level and to improve the quality of life of the elderly population.

The benefits of the system are organized in three levels:

Diagnosis Level: its goal is the detection of anxiety and depression symptoms. After the evaluation, the system automatically decides the clinical and therapeutic recommended options depending on the clinical situation detected. If the Butler system has detected that the mood state is altered, the system sends an alarm to the professional in charge. Besides, the application stores all the information for the professional to access easily.

Therapeutic Level: it has two resources. The first one consist of “2 Virtual Worlds in 3D to generate positive emotions”, such as joy and relax through mood induction procedures that have been included in the virtual environment. The other one is “The Therapeutic Book of Life” which includes multimedia elements that have been designed to train the autobiographic memory through a therapeutic program. As well as the other application, the professional can access the information about the therapeutic resource used by the elder people (time used in each resources, the effect produced).

Finally, the Pleasure Level, whose aim is to increase the social relations of the elderly people, the structure and transmission of their vital memories, to train their communication abilities and the use of the new technologies. The application includes several options: e-mails, chat, videoconferences, searching for friends within the Butler network, photos and music, blog and Internet.

During the 2007-2008 period, we carried out a pilot study with elderly users that did not present clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression, physical nor cognitive problems. These users had little or no basic knowledge on ICTs. The aim was to evaluate their satisfaction and difficulty levels and the changes generated in their mood state. The results show that all users managed to use The Butler system. After using it, they increased their positive emotions, decreased their negative ones, showed high levels of satisfaction, and perceived low difficulty levels.

Nowadays we are carrying out the clinical and non-clinical validation of the system, through the installation of it in several elderly nursing homes and in our laboratory.