Distinctive features of a senior’s face from a communicative perspective

This research is the first step of a project concerning a comparative analysis of the image of the elderly present in public space of Warsaw and Berlin. The primary aim of the study was to analyse the seniors’ faces in order to identify the determinants of the corporeal physicality of the human face on the basis of which a given face is classified as belonging to an elderly person. The next goal was to construct an optimal model of the senior’s face based on the set of the recognised determinants. The ultimate objective was to develop a feature- based algorithm which will be used in the objectified process of identifying and categorising faces in terms of age. The algorithm will be further applied in the project regarding visual communication, where messages available in public space should be selected according to the criterion of presenting the elderly. The research method was a diagnostic survey and for the data collection, a survey questionnaire was used as a tool. The work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, under the research project “The image of older adults in the public space of Warsaw and Berlin” no UMO-2021/43/B/HS2/01288.