Abstract
Lack of communication methods due to older adults’ physical and mental decline produce a significant communication gap with friends and family, which creates social and mental distance with them. Also, relatively few studies have been dedicated to developing social media technologies that are older-adult-friendly. The main goals of this initial study were (1) to develop a prototype of story-based communication application based on a touch-based tablet application; and (2) to assess the prototype design using a mixed-method approach. Although anecdotal stereotypes suggest that technology is harder for older adults to learn, this research found that older adults are willing to learn and use communication applications. Results also suggested that intuitive visual cues might play an important role in enabling older adults to grasp and understand the structure of an application. Therefore, this paper tries to expand the scope of designers’ knowledge for the development of tablet-based applications for older adults and find the possibilities of data usage for the related gerontology areas of study.
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Jang, W., Gilbert, S., Kang, S. (2019). FLOW: A Software Application Designed to Help Older Adults Build Distance Interaction. In: Ahram, T., Karwowski, W., Taiar, R. (eds) Human Systems Engineering and Design. IHSED 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 876. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02053-8_35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02053-8_35
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