Background: The ‘Confidence’ smartphone application aims at supporting elderly people to stay independent as long as possible.

Objectives: This paper presents first findings about the influences the usage of the system had on elderlies' lives.

Methods: 41 end-users tested ‘Confidence’ for six weeks within their daily routines. Before and after this test period the participants assessed their quality of life (QoL). These assessments were analyzed together with statements concerning QoL and the usage of ‘Confidence’ which were collected with questionnaires.

Results: Six participants assessed their QoL after the trial better than before and six participants assessed worse. Five of these people felt that ‘Confidence’ positively influenced their life and these five testers had a positive attitude towards ‘Confidence’ since the beginning of the trial. After the trial 38 % of the participants said that they felt safer, 37 % communicated more with others, 27 % forgot less, 13 % felt better oriented outside and 7 % were more on the move due to ‘Confidence’. 3 % said that they were less on the move, 2 % felt more unsafe and 2 % were less outside.

Conclusion: ‘Confidence’ has the potential to affect elderly users' lives. But, within this analysis positive or negative effects of its usage are not always correlated with a better or worse assessment of QoL. A connection between positive attitude towards a technology before usage and positive influence afterwards could be proven.