Introducing the Internet to the over-60s: Developing an email system for older novice computer users

Contemporary technology offers many benefits to older people, but these are often rendered inaccessible through poor software design. As the Internet increasingly becomes a source of information and services it is vital to ensure that older people can access these resources. As part of project funded by the UK government, a multi-disciplinary team set out to develop usable software that would help to introduce older people to the Internet. The first step was to develop an email system for older people with no experience of Internet use. The project was intended to show that it is possible to design usable technology for this group and to explore some of the issues involved in doing so. Design and technical challenges necessitated various tradeoffs. The system produced demonstrated the success of the design decisions: it was significantly easier to use than, and preferred to, a commercial equivalent by a group of older people with no experience of Internet use.     

Older people and mobile phones: A multi-method investigation

This paper investigates issues related to the use of mobile phones by people aged 60 years and over and characteristics of an ageing-friendly mobile phone. This study combines qualitative and quantitative analysis methods of Delphi interviews, focus group discussions, and online survey. The expert interviews and the focus group discussions covered usage patterns, problems, benefits, and desired and unwanted features. The issues raised in the discussions were translated into an online survey of 100 people. This study revealed that older people are passive users of mobile phones, that they experience fear of consequences of using unfamiliar technology, and that most preferred design features are aids for declining functional abilities. Gender differences in preferred design features were observed, with women focusing on haptic aids and men on perceptual aids.     

Everyday use of computer-mediated communication tools and its evolution over time: An ethnographical study with older people

Based on a 3-year ethnographical study, this paper discusses the prolonged use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools by approximately 400 older people in an adult education centre in Barcelona (Spain). Contrary to oversimplified views of older people as ICT users, this paper shows that they make a very rich use of CMC tools. Relevant elements of this use are their permanent desire to feel and be included, social, independent and competent ICT users. Despite the numerous interaction issues they face when using ICT, some are constant across different tools. Difficulties due to cognition limit their interactions more severely than those problems due to perceiving visual information or using the mouse. By examining the longitudinal aspect of the study, this paper addresses the evolution of technology use and whether the interaction issues that most of the current older people exhibit will be relevant when today’s more ICT literate young adults grow older. Interaction issues due to cognition are time-persistent, and independent of both experience and practice with ICT. Difficulties reading from the screen or using input devices are overcome with ICT experience. The strategies adopted by older people for coping with all these interaction issues are always targeted at feeling and being included, social, independent and competent ICT users. The results deepen current understanding of tools use in connecting older people with their social circles and the interaction issues most of them encounter when using ICT. The results also suggest that cognitive-related problems will be the most important ones in our work with the next generation of older people.     

Digital circles of support: Meeting the information needs of older people

The UK Government strategy for aging in the 21st Century challenges conceptions of older people as passive recipients of care and promotes their engagement as active citizens. The strategy includes a commitment to test services which embody these principles with a range of innovative pilot projects. This paper summarises research on older people’s information needs and use which informed the design for one of these projects, Leeds Link-Age Plus. The research explored the complex circumstances around which older people access and use social and community information – a topic that has received limited attention in the literature. The paper is novel in considering how the use of informal networks for securing information, advice and advocacy can be supported by technology literate mediators, who may be older people, located within local community or voluntary organisations. Emphasising the mediator in design facilitates social contacts, directly addresses issues of trust and can reduce the chance of causing distress dealing with complex information. A model is suggested for using emerging technology to introduce new ways in which information for older adults can be improved by digital ‘circles of support’ – a form of social network where mediators collaborate to create and share self-authored content.     

User-Sensitive Inclusive Design

Although “User-Centred”, “Participatory”, and other similar design approaches have proved to be very valuable for mainstream design, their principles are more difficult to apply successfully when the user group contains, or is composed of, older and/or disabled users. In the field of design for older and disabled people, the “Universal Design”, “Inclusive Design” and “Design for All” movements have encouraged designers to extend their design briefs to include older and disabled people. The downside of these approaches is that they can tend to encourage designers to follow a traditional design path to produce a prototype design, and only then investigate how to modify their interfaces and systems to cope with older and/or disabled users. This can lead to an inefficient design process and sometimes an inappropriate design, which may be “accessible” to people with disabilities, but in practice unusable. This paper reviews the concept that the authors have called “User-Sensitive Inclusive Design”, which suggests a different approach to designing for marginalised groups of people. Rather than suggesting that designers rely on standards and guidelines, it is suggested that designers need to develop a real empathy with their user groups. A number of ways to achieve this are recommended, including the use of ethnography and techniques derived from professional theatre both for requirements gathering and for improving designers’ empathy for marginalised groups of users, such as older and disabled people.     

Older people’s production and appropriation of digital videos: an ethnographic study

While most of today’s children, young people, and adults are both consumers and producers of digital content, very little is known about older people as digital content creators. Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study, this paper reports on the digital video production and appropriation of approximately 200 older people (aged 60–85). They generated 320 videos over the course of the study. We show their motivations for engaging in digital video production, discuss their planned video making, and highlight their creativity while editing videos. We show the different meanings they ascribed to digital videos in their social appropriation of these objects, the meaningful strategies they adopted to share videos, and the impact on their perceived wellbeing. Furthermore, we outline the solutions the participants developed to overcome or cope with interaction issues they faced over time. We argue that the results portray older people as active and creative makers of digital videos with current video capturing, editing, and sharing technologies. We contend that this portrayal both encourages us to re-consider how older people should be seen within human–computer interaction and helps to frame future research/design activities that bridge the grey digital divide.     

Successful strategies of older people for finding information

Older people have successful search strategies for finding practical information in everyday situations but, increasingly, traditional information sources are being supplemented or replaced by web based ones. However, there are wider issues than just making information available if people are to replace existing strategies by new web based ones. In this paper we use three studies on the information usage of older people to explore the issues surrounding why they favour specific search strategy and technology combinations. The studies each investigate different aspects of information search in a natural setting and concern tasks relevant to older people as their lives change: finding e-government information and planning travel. Results suggest that a variety of measures are important in choice of strategy. Furthermore, interface mechanisms are needed that complement existing strategies, reinforce the existence and crossing of boundaries, and support interactive use of landmarks.     

Elderly user experience to improve a Kinect-based game playability

When it comes to using computers, older people experience many barriers, which are a considerable hurdle to overcome in order to enable them to accept technological aids. Thus, computer interface design and development must support elderly end users by avoiding many usability issues which lead to negative impacts on them. This paper describes the combination of a computer game design for the elderly and its implementation with user experience considerations embedded in the process. In this way, a positive gaming experience is provided to the end user. This game uses the Kinect device, enabling users to interact intuitively with the computer without any intermediary controller, and its main purpose is to promote at the same time cognitive and physical activities for healthy living. Feedback was taken from physiotherapists’ written observations and user experience questionnaires, which allowed the game to be adapted to their needs, obtaining 86.25% satisfaction. The effectiveness of this study opens the door to new developments in ICT that not only improve quality of life but also reduce the existing digital divide for the elderly.     

Painting the ideal home: using art to express visions of technologically supported independent living for older people in north-east England

This paper describes the investigation of the development of future technological products to support older people in everyday living through the agency of a community art group. Recent research has identified a number of challenges facing designers seeking to use traditional participatory design approaches to gather technology requirements data from older people. Here, a project is described that sought to get a group of older people to think creatively about their needs and desires for technological support through the medium of paint. The artistic expression technique described in this article allowed the identification of issues that had also been found by previous research that used a range of different techniques. This indicates that the approach shows promise, as it allows information to be gathered in an environment that is comfortable and familiar using methods already known by the participants and which they find enjoyable. It provides a complement (or possible alternative) to standard protocols and has the potential benefit of extracting even richer information as the primary task for participants is enjoyable in its own right and is not associated with an interrogative process. Furthermore, it is argued that some of the key risks of traditional approaches are lessened or removed by the naturalistic setting of this approach.

A literature survey on older adults' use of social network services and social applications

With aging, adults which once worked and were active become isolated from the world because with retirement comes a whole range of problems which span from the physical to the social scope. One of the most concerning is social isolation, which can only be fought by satisfying social needs. In terms of technology, the challenges are in designing social technologies that encourage older people to actively engage with each other and with the people around them. This paper presents a survey reviewing research surrounding the emergent field of Social Network Services (SNSs), along with other meaningful social applications, and its use by the older segment of the population. A total of thirteen domains are identified related with how these services can be improved to consider older adults characteristics: from the most important related with the family role and privacy control, to issues related with the design of the user interface, the importance of multimodal interaction and adaptive solutions to compensate age-related declines, to several other focusing on the importance of groups, photos, cultural and health information. Main contributions to the field of SNS and older adults are given in a set of recommendations which result from discussions on each domain and which aim at the design of a more inclusive SNS solution.     

Representing older people: towards meaningful images of the user in design scenarios

Designing for older people requires the consideration of a range of design problems, which may be related to difficult and sometimes highly personal matters. Issues such as fear, loneliness, dependency, and physical decline may be hard to observe or discuss in interviews. Pastiche scenarios and pastiche personae are techniques that employ characters to create a space for the discussion of new technological developments and user experience. This paper argues that the use of fictional characters can help to overcome restrictive notions of older people by disrupting designers’ prior assumptions. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences using pastiche techniques in two separate technology design projects that sought to address the needs of older people. In the first pastiche scenarios were developed by the designers of the system and used as discussion documents with users. In the second pastiche personae were used by groups of users themselves to generate scenarios which were scribed for later use by the design team. We explore how the use of fictional characters and settings can generate new ideas and undercut the potential in scenarios, for weak characterisation of “the user” to permit scenario writers to fit characters to technology rather than vice versa. To assist in future development of pastiche techniques in designing for older people, we provide an array of fictional older characters drawn from literary and popular culture.     

Little brother: could and should wearable computing technologies be applied to reducing older people’s fear of crime?

This paper considers whether emerging wearable computing technologies could and should be applied to reducing older people’s fear of crime. The paper begins by exploring the sociological and criminological literature, which debates why older people are most likely to fear crime, even though they are least likely to be victims. It goes on to report findings from ethnographic studies of key care and social service professionals in an English city. This field work reflects the ways in which assistive technologies for older people can function as signs of vulnerability, and also reports the uses of relatively simple information and communication technologies in providing critical backup and reassurance for elderly users. The fear of crime is then considered as an information problem centring on three questions: what’s going on, what can I do about it and can I get help? Possible applications of emerging wearable surveillance technologies are then explored through a design concept called the Cambadge. This is a wearable, wireless webcam for older people to broadcast video and audio data to police or community Web sites. This concept is situated with reference to a company developing a similar technology and to related fields. It is argued that the design problems of such surveillance technology are inherently political. The case is made with reference to the history and philosophy of surveillance and the massive demographic shifts of the ageing population. It is argued that utopian visions of the uses of such technology under-theorise power and accountability. The paper concludes that technological innovations will not adequately address older people’s fear of crime without accompanying social and cultural change.     

A service-based architecture for dynamically reconfigurable workflows

In the last few years, business process management systems have been employed for handling information systems of ever increasing complexity. As a consequence, the adoption of modelling languages enabling smooth and seamless transitions among the various phases of the process lifecycle, the ability of exploiting coordination schema over distributed execution contexts and the support for dynamic evolution and reconfiguration have become software engineering issues of great importance. This paper proposes the use of PN-Engine, a decentralized Petri nets execution engine, as a business process enactment engine. PN-Engine, which is based on the Jini service architecture, supports the decentralized execution of process models specified as Petri nets (PNs) enhanced with modular constructs and offers suitable mechanisms for dealing with the aforementioned design issues. PN-Engine allows to deploy and enact a new version of an existing process model without requiring the stopping/removal of older instances that are still running. The paper presents a novel approach enabling a decentralized migration procedure where concurrent portions of older instances migrate asynchronously to the new process model. Advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means of an example concerning a workflow for a wine-production process.     

Human Factors Analysis,Design, and Evaluation of Engage,a Consumer Health IT Application for Geriatric Heart Failure Self-Care

ABSTRACT

Human factors and ergonomics (HFE) and related approaches can be used to enhance research and development of consumer-facing health information technology (IT) systems, including technologies supporting the needs of people with chronic disease. A multiphase HFE study of health IT supporting self-care of chronic heart failure by older adults is described. The study was based on HFE frameworks of “patient work” and incorporated the three broad phases of user-centered design: study or analysis, design, and evaluation. In the study phase, data from observations, interviews, surveys, and other methods were analyzed to identify gaps in and requirements for supporting heart failure self-care. The design phase applied findings from the study phase throughout an iterative process, culminating in the design of the Engage application, a product intended for continuous use over 30 days to stimulate self-care engagement, behavior, and knowledge. During the evaluation phase, a variety of usability issues through expert heuristic evaluation and laboratory-based usability testing were identified. The implications of our findings regarding heart failure self-care in older adults and the methodological challenges of rapid translational field research and development in this domain are discussed.     

Design for older and disabled people – where do we go from here?

The significant changes in the social, legal, demographic, and economic landscape over the past 10–15 years present enormous opportunities for the human–computer interface design community. These changes will have a significant impact on the design and development of systems for older and disabled people. This paper brings together a number of proposals to improve both specialist and mainstream design methods in the field as a contribution to the debate about design for older and disabled people and the concept of universal usability. Published online: 6 November 2002     

Lessons learned in deploying independent living technologies to older adults’ homes

Independent living technologies are fast gaining interest within both academia and industry, amid the realization that the world’s population is ageing. Technology can increase the quality of life of older people, allowing them to age-in-place and helping them to remain physically, cognitively and socially engaged with their environment. However, little research in this area is applied. The paper argues for the necessity of moving such technology out of the research laboratory and into the home, where its real impact on the lives of older adults can be assessed. Moreover, a series of recommendations are outlined, encompassing the life cycle of independent living technologies, from ethnographic assessment, through to design, deployment and evaluation. This work is based on lessons learned in deploying such technologies to older people in over 200 homes. This paper can act as a guide for other researchers interested in developing technologies with older people.     

Multimodality and interactional differences in older adults

Many age-associated impairments such as loss of memory and vision make computer use difficult for older adults. This paper is concerned with interface design in a voice Web browser, which compensates for age-associated impairments, particularly loss of memory and vision. It describes a special Voice Help facility talking to older adults through their browser interaction, and reports experiments to establish the mixes of output media (text and speech) that are most effective for information transfer. In particular, the paper demonstrates that older adults retention of spoken output is different to that of younger people. The paper provides information on absorption rates for different media for older adults, which supports the design of multimodal systems suited to older adults. This is important for the development of systems that enable older adults to absorb information easily.     

The impact of aging on access to technology

The number of people over the age of 65 is increasing worldwide with the fastest growing subgroup those aged 80+ years. Computer and information technologies hold promise in terms of increasing the quality of life for older people. However, successful use of technology by older adults is predicated on systems that are designed to accommodate the needs and preferences of this user group. This paper discusses the implications of age-related changes in cognition for system design. Generally, the existing literature shows that, although older adults are willing to use technology, many report usability problems with existing systems and these problems may in part be due to the cognitive and perceptual demands placed on the user. These findings are discussed in terms of guidelines for system design.     

Pastiche scenarios: Fiction as a resource for user centred design

Pastiche scenarios draw on fiction as a resource to explore the interior ‘felt-life’ aspects of user experience and the complex social and cultural issues raised by technological innovations. This paper sets out an approach for their use, outlining techniques for the location of source material and presenting three case studies of pastiche scenario use. The first case study is an evaluation of the Apple iPod that explores the socio-cultural meanings of the technology. The second case study focuses on the participatory design of Net Neighbours, an online shopping system where volunteers shop as intermediaries for older people who do not have access to computers. The third is an in depth consideration of a conceptual design, the ‘cambadge’ a wearable lightweight web cam which, upon activation broadcasts to police or public websites intended to reduce older people's fear of crime. This design concept is explored in depth in pastiche scenarios of the Miss Marple stories, A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-four that reflect on how the device might be experienced not only by users but also by those it is used against. It is argued that pastiche scenarios are a useful complementary method for designers to reason about user experience as well as the broad social and cultural impacts of new technologies.