  This paper discusses the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm
in the context of assisted living for elderly and fragile people, in the light
of the peculiar requirements of such users, both from a functional and a
technological perspective. We stress some aspects that are often disregarded by
the technical community, such as technology acceptability and usability, and we
describe the framework and the phases of the current co-design approaches that
imply the active involvement of the final users in the system design process.
Thereby, we identify a series of design practices to merge technical and
fragile people's requirements. The discussion is backed up by the description
of DOMHO, a prototypal IoT-based AAL system that embodies most of the concepts
described in the paper, and that is being deployed and tested in a shelter
house for elders, and in an apartment for the co-housing of individuals with
disabilities. Finally, we discuss the potential and limits of the current
approaches and present some open challenges and future research directions.
