Smart phone launchers have been suggested as a viable means of increasing the uptake of smartphones and assistive technologies (ATs) among older adults. Launchers can be designed to ease older adults' use of smartphones by addressing perceptual, cognitive, and motoric changes that might hinder their ability to operate smartphones. However, little research currently exists that analyses the characteristics and assesses the usability of launchers with an adapted user interface (UI) for older adults. Thus, we present a study in which we compared a set of commercialised smartphone launchers with an adapted UI and ATs for older adults by means of heuristic evaluation. The results showed that launchers generally integrate only basic features (i.e., calls, texting, contacts) and only one AT (i.e., an SOS service). Although considerable variation exists between them in terms of overall usability, we also report the limited adequacy of launcher UIs in meeting older adults' needs and abilities. In particular, usability problems linked to content and perception were discovered that limit the older adults’ capability for error recovery as well as visual, auditory, and haptic access to the information provided by the UI. Interestingly, launchers with a larger number of features and ATs were found to have, on average, less usability problems. This indicates that reducing the number of features is not necessarily a feasible way to increase usability. Instead, more research-based development is needed, which should better consider recommendations for the age-friendly design of UIs on smartphones.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35265885
Design guidelines and checklists are suggested as a useful tool in the development and evaluation of interface design of mobile phones for older adults. Thus, this study explores the usability dimensions of mobile phone design for older adults and the related changes in terms of time and the type of device (feature phones vs. smartphones) based on an expert coding of the eight mobile phone design guidelines and checklists for older adults published between 2006 and 2014. The results of the expert coding show that design guidelines and checklists most frequently deal with visual and haptic issues (e.g., high contrast, button type, and button size), whilst they hardly ever address various elements of textual interface (e.g., ease of text entry, a button's feedback, and font type). Over time, the design guidelines and checklists have become more complex in terms of the average number of included usability categories and dimensions. For smartphones, the guidelines, on average, put more emphasis on the screen, touchscreen, text, and exterior related issues, whereas the design guidelines for feature phones stress the usability of the keypad and menus. Besides revealing potential usability dimensions that could be further expanded in the guidelines, this study also highlights the need for conceptual and empirical advancement in researching ergonomic and usability dimensions of other small-screen mobile devices such tablets and wearables that are use in tele-care and tele-health applications for monitoring daily activities and measuring vital signs.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35061597
Age-friendly smartphone launchers are tools designed to enhance smartphone handling among older adults with cognitive and functional limitations. Although evidence exists about the positive effects of age-friendly smartphone launchers on older adults' usability performance in general, little is known about how the design and interface complexity of these launchers affect their interface usability effectiveness and efficiency compared with standard Android smartphone interfaces. Thus, in this study, a randomized crossover experiment involving 50 older smartphone users, aged 60 years and above, was guided by the principles of summative usability testing to assess whether an age-friendly launcher performs better than a standard Android launcher performs and to investigate the relationship between the user interface complexity and usability performance of launchers. The results of usability tests in which each participant solved 10 tasks on both launchers indicate that the two tested launchers had comparable effectiveness (i.e. completeness with which participants achieved the test tasks' goals), whereas the age-friendly launcher marginally outperformed its standard Android counterpart in terms of efficiency (i.e. the amount of time used by participants to solve the test tasks). The results also demonstrate that lower user interface complexity is associated with higher effectiveness and efficiency, suggesting that age-friendly smartphone launchers might lead to higher adoption rates of smartphones among older adults if interface designers could reduce their cognitive complexity by limiting the number of steps and alternative paths for task completion.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35724893
Digital inequalities research has documented a set of practices related to people's Internet use that questions the binary division between Internet users and non-users. In particular, among older adults, a considerably large group of individuals has been identified as not using the Internet by themselves; rather, they ask members of their personal networks to do things online for them they use the Internet by proxy. Since previous research shows that children and grandchildren are important sources of help when it comes to Internet use, the current paper indicates that the notion of intergenerational solidarity is a sound conceptual basis for understanding the relationship between social support networks and proxy Internet use among Internet non-users. Notably, the concept of functional solidarity as a dimension of intergenerational solidarity is advanced, as this relates to the frequency of the intergenerational exchange of resources and services encompassing various types of assistance and support offered between two generations. Empirically, this paper investigates how the two types of social support networks and their characteristics are associated with proxy Internet use. The results from multivariate analyses of survey data from a nation-wide representative sample show that when comparing emotional and socializing support networks, only the latter is associated with proxy Internet use: Internet non-users who have (grand-)children in their socializing support network are more likely to engage in proxy Internet use. The results also indicate that non-users who are younger, more educated, have children, and live in urban areas are more inclined to engage in proxy Internet use, regardless of the type of social support. The findings indicate the importance of empirical investigation related to different aspects of functional solidarity, as the effects on proxy Internet use depend on the type of social support.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35335773
Over the last two decades, it has been argued that social relations have individualised due to increasing use of personal networking technologies. It is purported that individuals, rather than family solidarities, have become the principal unit of household connectivity. Families are kept together ever more through ICT-mediated communication. Therefore, the aim of the study was to investigate to what extent ICT usage is intertwined with different forms of intergenerational family solidarity in Slovenia and Finland. Empirical data consists of student reports based on extended group interviews and observations. The key informants (college students) were given the assignment to observe ICT-related communication in their families for one week and then interview at least five of their family members on their ICT use. The total number of Slovenian informants was 139, including the 23 key, college students, informants. The total number of Finnish informants was 133, including the 22 key informants. The most salient observation from the key informants’ reports is that ICTs facilitate intra-family communication, particularly in Finland. Country-differences in the organisation of family and housing reflect in the ways informants describe the role of ICTs in family relationships. While geographically scattered extended families in Finland have found the exchange of short messages as a channel to perform family solidarity from afar, the physical propinquity of family members in Slovenia do not bestow the same. The results also suggest that intergenerational assistance in ICT emerges not just from generational differences, but also pertains to life stages and country differences in the developmental stage of the information society, whereby the need for intergenerational assistance in ICT use might be higher in Slovenia. While many causal relations between various solidarity forms have been found earlier, this study indicates that ICT-mediated interaction may alter such associations, which could be studied more in detail in further studies. The study also pointed out some ways of measuring ICT-related family solidarity to be further investigated in the future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35078493