Interaction techniques for older adults using touchscreen devices: a literature review
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paper_title: Studying Point-Select-Drag Interaction Techniques for Older People with Cognitive Impairment

paper_content:

Graphical user interfaces and interactions that involve pointing to items and dragging them are becoming more common in rehabilitation and assistive technologies. We are currently investigating interaction techniques to understand point-select-drag interactions for older people with cognitive impairment. In particular, this study reports how older perform such tasks. Significant differences in behavior between all of the interaction techniques are observed and the reasons for these differences are discussed according the cognitive impairment.
---
paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
---
paper_title: Aging, motor control, and the performance of computer mouse tasks

paper_content:

Because of the increased presence of computers in work and everyday life and the demographic "graying" of America, there is a need for interface designs that promote accessibility for older people. This study examined age differences in the performance of basic computer mouse control techniques. An additional goal of the study was to examine the influence of age-related changes in psychomotor abilities on mouse control. A total of 60 participants in 3 age groups (20--39 years, 40--59 years, and 60--75 years) performed 4 target acquisition tasks (pointing, clicking, double-clicking, and dragging) using a computer mouse. The data indicated that the older participants had more difficulty performing mouse tasks than the younger participants. Differences in performance attributable to age were found for the more complex tasks (clicking and double-clicking). Furthermore, age-related changes in psychomotor abilities were related to age differences in performance. We discuss applications to computer interface des...
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Studying Point-Select-Drag Interaction Techniques for Older People with Cognitive Impairment

paper_content:

Graphical user interfaces and interactions that involve pointing to items and dragging them are becoming more common in rehabilitation and assistive technologies. We are currently investigating interaction techniques to understand point-select-drag interactions for older people with cognitive impairment. In particular, this study reports how older perform such tasks. Significant differences in behavior between all of the interaction techniques are observed and the reasons for these differences are discussed according the cognitive impairment.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
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paper_title: Usability of touch-panel interfaces for older adults.

paper_content:

The usability of a touch-panel interface was compared among young, middle-aged, and older adults. In addition, a performance model of a touch panel was developed so that pointing time could be predicted with higher accuracy. Moreover, the target location to which a participant could point most quickly was determined. The pointing time with a PC mouse was longer for the older adults than for the other age groups, whereas there were no significant differences in pointing time among the three age groups when a touch-panel interface was used. Pointing to the center of a square target led to the fastest pointing time among nine target locations. Based on these results, we offer some guidelines for the design of touch-panel interfaces and show implications for users of different age groups. Actual or potential applications of this research include designing touch-panel interfaces to make them accessible for older adults and predicting movement times when users operate such devices.
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paper_title: Basic senior personas: a representative design tool covering the spectrum of European older adults

paper_content:

The persona method is a powerful approach to focus on needs and characteristics of target users, keeping complex user data,numbers and diagrams alive during the whole design cycle.However, the development of prosperous personas requires a considerable amount of time, effort and specific skills. This paper introduces the development of a set of 30 basic senior personas, covering a broad range of characteristics of European older adults, following a quantitative development approach. The aim of this tool is to support researchers and developers in extending empathy for their target users when developing ICT solutions for the benefit of older adults. The main innovation lies in the representativeness of the basic senior personas. The personas build on multifaceted quantitative data from a single source including micro-level information from roughly 12,500 older individuals living in different European countries. The resulting personas may be applied in their basic form but are extendable to specific contexts. Also, the suggested tool addresses the drawbacks of current existing personas describing older adults: being representative and cost-efficient. The basic senior personas, a filter tool, a manual and templates for "persona marketing" articles are available for free online under http://elderlypersonas.cure.at.
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paper_title: Aging, motor control, and the performance of computer mouse tasks

paper_content:

Because of the increased presence of computers in work and everyday life and the demographic "graying" of America, there is a need for interface designs that promote accessibility for older people. This study examined age differences in the performance of basic computer mouse control techniques. An additional goal of the study was to examine the influence of age-related changes in psychomotor abilities on mouse control. A total of 60 participants in 3 age groups (20--39 years, 40--59 years, and 60--75 years) performed 4 target acquisition tasks (pointing, clicking, double-clicking, and dragging) using a computer mouse. The data indicated that the older participants had more difficulty performing mouse tasks than the younger participants. Differences in performance attributable to age were found for the more complex tasks (clicking and double-clicking). Furthermore, age-related changes in psychomotor abilities were related to age differences in performance. We discuss applications to computer interface des...
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
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paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
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paper_title: Comparison between single-touch and multi-touch interaction for older people

paper_content:

This paper describes a study exploring the multi-touch interaction for older adults. The aim of this experiment was to check the relevance of this interaction versus single-touch interaction to realize object manipulation tasks: move, rotate and zoom. For each task, the user had to manipulate a rectangle and superimpose it to a picture frame. Our study shows that adults and principally older adults had more difficulties to realize these tasks for multi-touch interaction than for single-touch interaction.
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paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
---
paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
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paper_title: Evaluating swabbing: a touchscreen input method for elderly users with tremor

paper_content:

Elderly users suffering from hand tremor have difficulties interacting with touchscreens because of finger oscillation. It has been previously observed that sliding one's finger across the screen may help reduce this oscillation. In this work, we empirically confirm this advantage by (1) measuring finger oscillation during different actions and (2) comparing error rate and user satisfaction between traditional tapping and swabbing in which the user slides his finger towards a target on a screen edge to select it. We found that oscillation is generally reduced during sliding. Also, compared to tapping, swabbing resulted in improved error rates and user satisfaction. We believe that swabbing will make touchscreens more accessible to senior users with tremor.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
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paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
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paper_title: Gestural interfaces for elderly users: Help or hindrance

paper_content:

In this paper we investigate whether finger gesture input is a suitable input method, especially for older users (60+) with respect to age-related changes in sensory, cognitive and motor abilities. We present a study in which we compare a group of older users to a younger user group on a set of 42 different finger gestures on measures of speed and accuracy. The size and the complexity of the gestures varied systematically in order to find out how these factors interact with age on gesture performance. The results showed that older users are a little slower, but not necessarily less accurate than younger users, even on smaller screen sizes, and across different levels of gesture complexity. This indicates that gesture-based interaction could be a suitable input method for older adults. At least not a hindrance - maybe even a help.
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paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
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paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
---
paper_title: Aging, motor control, and the performance of computer mouse tasks

paper_content:

Because of the increased presence of computers in work and everyday life and the demographic "graying" of America, there is a need for interface designs that promote accessibility for older people. This study examined age differences in the performance of basic computer mouse control techniques. An additional goal of the study was to examine the influence of age-related changes in psychomotor abilities on mouse control. A total of 60 participants in 3 age groups (20--39 years, 40--59 years, and 60--75 years) performed 4 target acquisition tasks (pointing, clicking, double-clicking, and dragging) using a computer mouse. The data indicated that the older participants had more difficulty performing mouse tasks than the younger participants. Differences in performance attributable to age were found for the more complex tasks (clicking and double-clicking). Furthermore, age-related changes in psychomotor abilities were related to age differences in performance. We discuss applications to computer interface des...
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paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
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paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
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paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
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paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
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paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
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paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
---
paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
---
paper_title: Evaluating swabbing: a touchscreen input method for elderly users with tremor

paper_content:

Elderly users suffering from hand tremor have difficulties interacting with touchscreens because of finger oscillation. It has been previously observed that sliding one's finger across the screen may help reduce this oscillation. In this work, we empirically confirm this advantage by (1) measuring finger oscillation during different actions and (2) comparing error rate and user satisfaction between traditional tapping and swabbing in which the user slides his finger towards a target on a screen edge to select it. We found that oscillation is generally reduced during sliding. Also, compared to tapping, swabbing resulted in improved error rates and user satisfaction. We believe that swabbing will make touchscreens more accessible to senior users with tremor.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
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paper_title: Usability evaluation of numeric entry tasks on keypad type and age.

paper_content:

Abstract This study investigated the effects of age and two keypad types (physical keypad and touch-screen one) on the usability of numeric entry tasks. Twenty four subjects (12 young adults 23–33 years old and 12 older adults 65–76 years old) performed three types of entry tasks: 4-digit, 4-digit of password type, and 11-digit. The dependent variables for the performance were mean entry time per unit stroke and error rate. Subjective ratings for ease of use of each keypad type were collected after the experiment. The mean entry time per unit stroke of the young adults was significantly smaller than that of the older adults. The older adults had significantly different mean entry times per unit stroke on the two keypad types. The error rates between young and older adults were significantly different for the touch-screen keypad. The subjective ratings showed that the participants preferred the touch-screen keypad to the physical keypad. The results showed that the older adults preferred the touch-screen keypad and could operate more quickly, and that tactile feedback is needed for the touch-screen keypad to increase input accuracy. The results of this study can be applied when designing different information technology products to input numbers using one hand. Relevance to industry Touch-screen technology is increasingly used in ticketing Kiosks used in public places such as airports, stations or theaters, and in automated teller machines (ATMs) and cash dispensers (CDs). This paper can be applied to design these products or systems, particularly considering usability improvements for older adults.
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paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
---
paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
---
paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Gestural interfaces for elderly users: Help or hindrance

paper_content:

In this paper we investigate whether finger gesture input is a suitable input method, especially for older users (60+) with respect to age-related changes in sensory, cognitive and motor abilities. We present a study in which we compare a group of older users to a younger user group on a set of 42 different finger gestures on measures of speed and accuracy. The size and the complexity of the gestures varied systematically in order to find out how these factors interact with age on gesture performance. The results showed that older users are a little slower, but not necessarily less accurate than younger users, even on smaller screen sizes, and across different levels of gesture complexity. This indicates that gesture-based interaction could be a suitable input method for older adults. At least not a hindrance - maybe even a help.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
---
paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
---
paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
---
paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
---
paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
---
paper_title: Comparison between single-touch and multi-touch interaction for older people

paper_content:

This paper describes a study exploring the multi-touch interaction for older adults. The aim of this experiment was to check the relevance of this interaction versus single-touch interaction to realize object manipulation tasks: move, rotate and zoom. For each task, the user had to manipulate a rectangle and superimpose it to a picture frame. Our study shows that adults and principally older adults had more difficulties to realize these tasks for multi-touch interaction than for single-touch interaction.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
---
paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
---
paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
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paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
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paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
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paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
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paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
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paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
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paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
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paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
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paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
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paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
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paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Comparison between single-touch and multi-touch interaction for older people

paper_content:

This paper describes a study exploring the multi-touch interaction for older adults. The aim of this experiment was to check the relevance of this interaction versus single-touch interaction to realize object manipulation tasks: move, rotate and zoom. For each task, the user had to manipulate a rectangle and superimpose it to a picture frame. Our study shows that adults and principally older adults had more difficulties to realize these tasks for multi-touch interaction than for single-touch interaction.
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paper_title: Effect of computer mouse gain and visual demand on mouse clicking performance and muscle activation in a young and elderly group of experienced computer users.

paper_content:

The present study evaluated the specific effects of motor demand and visual demands on the ability to control motor output in terms of performance and muscle activation. Young and elderly subjects performed multidirectional pointing tasks with the computer mouse. Three levels of mouse gain and three levels of target size were used. All subjects demonstrated a reduced working speed and hit rate at the highest mouse gain (1:8) when the target size was small. The young group had an optimum at mouse gain 1:4. The elderly group was most sensitive to the combination of high mouse gain and small targets and thus, this age group should avoid this combination. Decreasing target sizes (i.e. increasing visual demand) reduced performance in both groups despite that motor demand was maintained constant. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid small screen objects and letters. Forearm muscle activity was only to a minor degree influenced by mouse gain (and target sizes) indicating that stability of the forearm/hand is of significance during computer mouse control. The study has implications for ergonomists, pointing device manufacturers and software developers.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
---
paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
---
paper_title: Performance and muscle activity during computer mouse tasks in young and elderly adults

paper_content:

The influence of age on performance and muscle activity was studied during computer mouse tasks designed to induce high demands on motor control. Eight young (mean age 25 years) and nine elderly (mean age 63 years) women participated. When the speed was self-determined, the elderly subjects performed 13%-18% slower than did the young. When speed was predefined, the error rate was higher in the elderly subjects than in the young ones (medium precision 7.8% compared to 2.5%, high precision 16.5% compared to 7.9%, respectively). The highest error rate was found for double-clicking (32.9% compared to 13.5%, respectively). The reduced performance in the elderly subjects was hypothesised to be a combined effect of deteriorated proprioception, increased motor unit size, and changes in the central nervous system. Electrical activity (EMG) was recorded from the forearm, shoulder and neck muscles. Higher levels of EMG activity were found in the elderly compared to the young. A likely explanation is that the impaired motor control necessitated an increased muscle activity. The highest levels of EMG activity and lack of EMG gaps were found for the forearm extensor muscles, especially the extensor digitorum muscle (mean EMG activity 10.4% compared to 8.1% of maximal electrical activity, EMGmax) whereas lower EMG activity levels were found for the shoulder region (e.g. right trapezius muscle mean EMG 2.8% compared to 1.1% EMGmax, respectively). The latter was possibly due to a relieving effect of the forearm support. Differences in muscle activity among the tasks were found, however they were minor for the shoulder and neck muscles. Consideration of the demands on motor control when designing user interfaces is recommended, to the benefit of both the young and the elderly.
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paper_title: Evaluating swabbing: a touchscreen input method for elderly users with tremor

paper_content:

Elderly users suffering from hand tremor have difficulties interacting with touchscreens because of finger oscillation. It has been previously observed that sliding one's finger across the screen may help reduce this oscillation. In this work, we empirically confirm this advantage by (1) measuring finger oscillation during different actions and (2) comparing error rate and user satisfaction between traditional tapping and swabbing in which the user slides his finger towards a target on a screen edge to select it. We found that oscillation is generally reduced during sliding. Also, compared to tapping, swabbing resulted in improved error rates and user satisfaction. We believe that swabbing will make touchscreens more accessible to senior users with tremor.
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paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
---
paper_title: Gestural interfaces for elderly users: Help or hindrance

paper_content:

In this paper we investigate whether finger gesture input is a suitable input method, especially for older users (60+) with respect to age-related changes in sensory, cognitive and motor abilities. We present a study in which we compare a group of older users to a younger user group on a set of 42 different finger gestures on measures of speed and accuracy. The size and the complexity of the gestures varied systematically in order to find out how these factors interact with age on gesture performance. The results showed that older users are a little slower, but not necessarily less accurate than younger users, even on smaller screen sizes, and across different levels of gesture complexity. This indicates that gesture-based interaction could be a suitable input method for older adults. At least not a hindrance - maybe even a help.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Developing a Touchscreen-based Domotic Tool for Users with Motor Disabilities

paper_content:

Domotics refers to the set of informatics and electronics systems able to automate, control and monitor a home. Accessibility can be defined as the users' potential for interaction, regardless of their technical, cognitive or physical abilities. Domotics usually focuses on the "intelligent home" concept, without explicitly considering the benefits that accessible services can provide for people with special needs. The paper presents the developing process of a domotic tool prototype that allows users with motor disabilities to control the surrounding artifacts of their home through the use of a touch screen-based mobile device. The prototype was developed using a user-centered design process, which explicitly includes usability and accessibility issues. The validation of the tool was conducted through analysis that involved (1) usability specialists, (2) physical therapists, and (3) real users from Teleton Foundation, a Chilean institution focused on rehabilitation and integration into society of children and adolescents who have motor disabilities.
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paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
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paper_title: Indirect mappings of multi-touch input using one and two hands

paper_content:

Touchpad and touchscreen interaction using multiple fingers is emerging as a valuable form of high-degree-of-freedom input. While bimanual interaction has been extensively studied, touchpad interaction using multiple fingers of the same hand is not yet well understood. We describe two experiments on user perception and control of multi-touch interaction using one and two hands. The first experiment addresses how to maintain perceptual-motor compatibility in multi-touch interaction, while the second measures the separability of control of degrees-of-freedom in the hands and fingers. Results indicate that two-touch interaction using two hands is compatible with control of two points, while twotouch interaction using one hand is compatible with control of a position, orientation, and hand-span. A slight advantage is found for two hands in separating the control of two positions.
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paper_title: Hand Grip Strength on a Large PDA: Holding While Reading Is Different from a Functional Task

paper_content:

several studies have been done measuring preferred hand grip strength, but none of them has measured preferred hand strength on a PDA or similar device when it is held and used. We measured dominant hand strength in two conditions similar to real PDA use, resting fore-arms on a table and holding the PDA without table support. We found that adult participants squeeze the device with their preferred hand significantly more than with their nonpreferred hand while holding. In addition, we examined users' hand strength while they were tapping on the back of the device with their right and left index fingers. Our results were different than expected from previous studies, as we found that there was no significant difference in dominant and non dominant hand strength during back tapping. Also participants' non preferred hand strength was not significantly different with their preferred hand when they tap on the back of the device. The results show that in such functional use during tapping, the dominant and non-dominant hands are used similarly which will contribute to future designs for PDAs and their interfaces. Our results may also contribute to design for more comfortable devices for users with hand disabilities.
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paper_title: Effect of touch screen button size and spacing on touch characteristics of users with and without disabilities.

paper_content:

OBJECTIVE ::: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of button size and spacing on touch characteristics (forces, impulses, and dwell times) during a digit entry touch screen task. A secondary objective was to investigate the effect of disability on touch characteristics. ::: ::: ::: BACKGROUND ::: Touch screens are common in public settings and workplaces. Although research has examined the effect of button size and spacing on performance, the effect on touch characteristics is unknown. ::: ::: ::: METHOD ::: A total of 52 participants (n = 23, fine motor control disability; n = 14, gross motor control disability; n = 15, no disability) completed a digit entry task. Button sizes varied from 10 mm to 30 mm, and button spacing was 1 mm or 3 mm. ::: ::: ::: RESULTS ::: Touch characteristics were significantly affected by button size. The exerted peak forces increased 17% between the largest and the smallest buttons, whereas impulses decreased 28%. Compared with the fine motor and nondisabled groups, the gross motor group had greater impulses (98% and 167%, respectively) and dwell times (60% and 129%, respectively). Peak forces were similar for all groups. ::: ::: ::: CONCLUSION ::: Button size but not spacing influenced touch characteristics during a digit entry task. The gross motor group had significantly greater dwell times and impulses than did the fine motor and nondisabled groups. ::: ::: ::: APPLICATION ::: Research on touch characteristics, in conjunction with that on user performance, can be used to guide human computer interface design strategies to improve accessibility of touch screen interfaces. Further research is needed to evaluate the effect of the exerted peak forces and impulses on user performance and fatigue.
---
paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
---
paper_title: Use of force plate instrumentation to assess kinetic variables during touch screen use

paper_content:

Touch screens are becoming ubiquitous technology, allowing for enhanced speed and convenience of user interfaces. To date, the majority of touch screen usability studies have focused on timing and accuracy of young, healthy individuals. This information alone may not be sufficient to improve accessibility and usability of touch screens. Kinetic data (e.g. force, impulse, and direction) may provide valuable information regarding human performance during touch screen use. Since kinetic information cannot be measured with a touch screen alone, touch screen-force plate instrumentation, software, and methodology were developed. Individuals with motor control disabilities (Cerebral Palsy and Multiple Sclerosis), as well as gender- and age-matched non-disabled participants, completed a pilot reciprocal tapping task to evaluate the validity of this new instrumentation to quantify touch characteristics. Results indicate that the instrumentation was able to successfully evaluate performance and kinetic characteristics. The kinetic information measured by the new instrumentation provides important insight into touch characteristics which may lead to improved usability and accessibility of touch screens.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Effect of sitting or standing on touch screen performance and touch characteristics.

paper_content:

OBJECTIVE ::: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of sitting and standing on performance and touch characteristics during a digit entry touch screen task in individuals with and without motor-control disabilities. ::: ::: ::: BACKGROUND ::: Previously, researchers of touch screen design have not considered the effect of posture (sitting vs. standing) on touch screen performance (accuracy and timing) and touch characteristics (force and impulse). ::: ::: ::: METHOD ::: Participants with motor-control disabilities (n = 15) and without (n = 15) completed a four-digit touch screen number entry task in both sitting and standing postures. Button sizes varied from 10 mm to 30 mm (5-mm increments), and button gap was 3 mm or 5 mm. ::: ::: ::: RESULTS ::: Participants had more misses and took longer to complete the task during standing for smaller button sizes (< 20 mm). At larger button sizes, performance was similar for both sitting and standing. In general, misses, time to complete task, and touch characteristics were increased for standing. Although disability affected performance (misses and timing), similar trends were observed for both groups across posture and button size. ::: ::: ::: CONCLUSION ::: Standing affects performance at smaller button sizes (< 20 mm). For participants with and without motor-control disabilities, standing led to greater exerted force and impulse. ::: ::: ::: APPLICATION ::: Along with interface design considerations, environmental conditions should also be considered to improve touch screen accessibility and usability.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
---
paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
---
paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
---
paper_title: Gestural interfaces for elderly users: Help or hindrance

paper_content:

In this paper we investigate whether finger gesture input is a suitable input method, especially for older users (60+) with respect to age-related changes in sensory, cognitive and motor abilities. We present a study in which we compare a group of older users to a younger user group on a set of 42 different finger gestures on measures of speed and accuracy. The size and the complexity of the gestures varied systematically in order to find out how these factors interact with age on gesture performance. The results showed that older users are a little slower, but not necessarily less accurate than younger users, even on smaller screen sizes, and across different levels of gesture complexity. This indicates that gesture-based interaction could be a suitable input method for older adults. At least not a hindrance - maybe even a help.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
---
paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
---
paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
---
paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
---
paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
---
paper_title: Investigating familiar interactions to help older adults learn computer applications more easily

paper_content:

Many older adults wish to gain competence in using a computer, but many application interfaces are perceived as complex and difficult to use, deterring potential users from investing the time to learn them. Hence, this study looks at the potential of 'familiar' interface design which builds upon users' knowledge of real world interactions, and applies existing skills to a new domain. Tools are provided in the form of familiar visual objects, and manipulated like real-world counterparts, rather than with buttons, icons and menus found in classic WIMP interfaces. ::: ::: This paper describes the formative evaluation of computer interactions that are based upon familiar real world tasks, which support multitouch interaction, involves few buttons and icons, no menus, no right-clicks or double-clicks and no dialogs. Using an example of an email client to test the principles of using "familiarity", the initial feedback was very encouraging, with 3 of the 4 participants being able to undertake some of the basic email tasks with no prior training and little or no help. The feedback has informed a number of refinements of the design principles, such as providing clearer affordance for visual objects. A full study is currently underway.
---
paper_title: Comparison between single-touch and multi-touch interaction for older people

paper_content:

This paper describes a study exploring the multi-touch interaction for older adults. The aim of this experiment was to check the relevance of this interaction versus single-touch interaction to realize object manipulation tasks: move, rotate and zoom. For each task, the user had to manipulate a rectangle and superimpose it to a picture frame. Our study shows that adults and principally older adults had more difficulties to realize these tasks for multi-touch interaction than for single-touch interaction.
---
paper_title: Investigation of Input Devices for the Age-differentiated Design of Human-Computer Interaction:

paper_content:

Demographic change demands new concepts for the support of computer work by aging employees. In particular, computer interaction presents a barrier due to a lack of experience and age-specific changes in performance. This article presents a study in which different input devices (mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze input) were analyzed regarding their usability and according to age diversity. Furthermore, different Hybrid Interfaces that combine eye-gaze input with additional input devices were investigated.
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paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
---
paper_title: Evaluating swabbing: a touchscreen input method for elderly users with tremor

paper_content:

Elderly users suffering from hand tremor have difficulties interacting with touchscreens because of finger oscillation. It has been previously observed that sliding one's finger across the screen may help reduce this oscillation. In this work, we empirically confirm this advantage by (1) measuring finger oscillation during different actions and (2) comparing error rate and user satisfaction between traditional tapping and swabbing in which the user slides his finger towards a target on a screen edge to select it. We found that oscillation is generally reduced during sliding. Also, compared to tapping, swabbing resulted in improved error rates and user satisfaction. We believe that swabbing will make touchscreens more accessible to senior users with tremor.
---
paper_title: Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input

paper_content:

Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
---
paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
---
paper_title: Gestural interfaces for elderly users: Help or hindrance

paper_content:

In this paper we investigate whether finger gesture input is a suitable input method, especially for older users (60+) with respect to age-related changes in sensory, cognitive and motor abilities. We present a study in which we compare a group of older users to a younger user group on a set of 42 different finger gestures on measures of speed and accuracy. The size and the complexity of the gestures varied systematically in order to find out how these factors interact with age on gesture performance. The results showed that older users are a little slower, but not necessarily less accurate than younger users, even on smaller screen sizes, and across different levels of gesture complexity. This indicates that gesture-based interaction could be a suitable input method for older adults. At least not a hindrance - maybe even a help.
---
paper_title: Usability evaluation of numeric entry tasks on keypad type and age.

paper_content:

Abstract This study investigated the effects of age and two keypad types (physical keypad and touch-screen one) on the usability of numeric entry tasks. Twenty four subjects (12 young adults 23–33 years old and 12 older adults 65–76 years old) performed three types of entry tasks: 4-digit, 4-digit of password type, and 11-digit. The dependent variables for the performance were mean entry time per unit stroke and error rate. Subjective ratings for ease of use of each keypad type were collected after the experiment. The mean entry time per unit stroke of the young adults was significantly smaller than that of the older adults. The older adults had significantly different mean entry times per unit stroke on the two keypad types. The error rates between young and older adults were significantly different for the touch-screen keypad. The subjective ratings showed that the participants preferred the touch-screen keypad to the physical keypad. The results showed that the older adults preferred the touch-screen keypad and could operate more quickly, and that tactile feedback is needed for the touch-screen keypad to increase input accuracy. The results of this study can be applied when designing different information technology products to input numbers using one hand. Relevance to industry Touch-screen technology is increasingly used in ticketing Kiosks used in public places such as airports, stations or theaters, and in automated teller machines (ATMs) and cash dispensers (CDs). This paper can be applied to design these products or systems, particularly considering usability improvements for older adults.
---
paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
---
paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
---
paper_title: Tap or touch?: pen-based selection accuracy for the young and old

paper_content:

The effect of the decline in cognitive, perceptive, and motor abilities on older adults' performance with input devices has been well documented in several experiments. None of these experiments, however, have provided information on the challenges faced by older adults when using pens to interact with handheld computers. To address this need, we conducted a study to learn about the performance of older adults in simple pen-based tasks with handheld computers. The study compared the performance of twenty 18-22 year olds, twenty 50-64 year olds, and twenty 65-84 year olds. We found that for the most part, older adults were able to complete tasks accurately. An exception occurred with the low accuracy rates achieved by 65-84 year old participants when tapping on targets of the same size as the standard radio buttons, checkboxes, and icons on the PocketPC. An alternative selection technique we refer to as "touch" enabled 65-84 year olds to select targets more accurately. This technique did not negatively affect the performance of the other participants. If tapping to select, making standard-sized targets 50 percent larger provided 65-84 year olds with similar advantages to switching to "touch" interactions. The results suggest that "touch" interactions need to be further explored to understand whether they will work in more realistic situations.
---
paper_title: Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

paper_content:

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.
---
paper_title: Text entry on handheld computers by older users

paper_content:

Small pocket computers offer great potential in workplaces where mobility is needed to collect data or access reference information while carrying out tasks such as maintenance or customer support. This paper reports on three studies examining the hypothesis that data entry by older workers is easier when the pocket computer has a physical keyboard, albeit a small one, rather than a touchscreen keyboard. Using a counter-balanced, within-subjects design the accuracy and speed with which adults over 55 years of age could make or modify short text entries was measured for both kinds of pocket computer. The keyboard computer was the Hewlett Packard 360LX (HP), but the touch-screen computers varied across studies (experiment 1: Apple Newton™ and PalmPilot™; experiment 2: Philips Nino™; experiment 3: Casio E10™). All studies showed significant decrements in accuracy and speed when entering text via the touch-screen. Across studies, most participants preferred using the HP's small physical keyboard. Even after a...
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paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
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paper_title: Slipping and drifting: using older users to uncover pen-based target acquisition difficulties

paper_content:

This paper presents the results of a study to gather information on the underlying causes of pen -based target acquisition difficulty. In order to observe both simple and complex interaction, two tasks (menu and Fitts' tapping) were used. Thirty-six participants across three age groups (18-54, 54-69, and 70-85) were included to draw out both general shortcomings of targeting, and those difficulties unique to older users. Three primary sources of target acquisition difficulty were identified: slipping off the target, drifting unexpectedly from one menu to the next, and missing a menu selection by selecting the top edge of the item below. Based on these difficulties, we then evolved several designs for improving pen-based target acquisition. An additional finding was that including older users as participants allowed us to uncover pen-interaction deficiencies that we would likely have missed otherwise.
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paper_title: Lowering elderly Japanese users’ resistance towards computers by using touchscreen technology

paper_content:

The standard qwerty keyboard is considered to be a major source of reluctance towards computer technology use by Japanese elderly, due to their limited experience with typewriters and the high cognitive demand involved in inputting Japanese characters. The touchscreen enables users to enter Japanese characters more directly and is expected to moderate this resistance. An e-mail terminal with a touchscreen was developed and compared with the same terminal using a standard keyboard and mouse. Computer attitudes and subjective evaluations of 32 older adults were measured. The results showed that the anxiety factor of computer attitudes declined significantly in the touchscreen condition.
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paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
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paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
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paper_title: Use of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults

paper_content:

A sample of 85 seniors was given experience (10 trials) playing two computer tasks using four input devices (touch screen, enlarged mouse [EZ Ball], mouse, and touch pad). Performance measures assessed both accuracy and time to complete components of the game for these devices. As well, participants completed a survey where they evaluated each of the devices. Seniors also completed a series of measures assessing visual memory, visual perception, motor coordination, and motor dexterity. Overall, previous experience with computers had a significant impact on the type of device that yielded the highest accuracy and speed performance, with different devices yielding better performance for novices versus experienced computer users. Regression analyses indicated that the mouse was the most demanding device in terms of the cognitive and motor-demand measures. Discussion centers on the relative benefits and perceptions regarding these devices among senior populations.
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paper_title: A Study of Pointing Performance of Elderly Users on Smartphones

paper_content:

The number of global smartphone users is rapidly increasing. However, the proportion of elderly persons using smartphones is lower than that of other age groups because they feel it is difficult to use touch screens. There have only been a few studies about usability and elderly smartphone users or designs for them. Based on this background, we studied the pointing action of elderly users, which is a basic skill required to use touch screens on smartphones. We reviewed previous works to determine specific research methods and categorized them into three groups: (a) effect of target size and spacing on touch screen pointing performance, (b) effect of age on pointing performance, and (c) feedback of touch screens. To investigate the touch screen pointing performance of elderly, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 3 target sizes (5 mm, 8 mm, and 12 mm) and 2 target spacings (1 mm, 3 mm) were evaluated. Adding to that, we analyzed whether touch screen pointing performance is dependent on th...
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paper_title: Evaluating swabbing: a touchscreen input method for elderly users with tremor

paper_content:

Elderly users suffering from hand tremor have difficulties interacting with touchscreens because of finger oscillation. It has been previously observed that sliding one's finger across the screen may help reduce this oscillation. In this work, we empirically confirm this advantage by (1) measuring finger oscillation during different actions and (2) comparing error rate and user satisfaction between traditional tapping and swabbing in which the user slides his finger towards a target on a screen edge to select it. We found that oscillation is generally reduced during sliding. Also, compared to tapping, swabbing resulted in improved error rates and user satisfaction. We believe that swabbing will make touchscreens more accessible to senior users with tremor.
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paper_title: The elderly interacting with a digital agenda through an RFID pen and a touch screen

paper_content:

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it is now possible not only to support new home services to improve their quality of life, but also to provide them with more natural, simple and multimodal interaction styles. It enables introducing new better-suited interaction styles for performing tasks according to user need, abilities and the usage conditions. In this paper, a digital agenda application is described and tested by a group of elderly users. This customized personal agenda allows elders to create agenda entries, to view calendar entries and a person's telephone without typing any letter or number. Through observation and the capture of data we studied how six participants (ages from 66 to 74) interacted with the personal agenda through a touch screen and an RFID-based interface. The RFID interaction consisted of a sheet-like physical object' the RFID board', and a pen-like object 'the IDBlue pen' that the users used to choose the desired option in the board. Beside the users' satisfaction, interesting results have been found that make us aware of valuable information to enhance their interaction with the digital world, as well as, their quality of life. Moreover, it is shown how a pen-like object and a sheet-like one can be used by the elderly to interact with the digital world.
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paper_title: Elderly text-entry performance on touchscreens

paper_content:

Touchscreen devices have become increasingly popular. Yet they lack of tactile feedback and motor stability, making it difficult effectively typing on virtual keyboards. This is even worse for elderly users and their declining motor abilities, particularly hand tremor. In this paper we examine text-entry performance and typing patterns of elderly users on touch-based devices. Moreover, we analyze users' hand tremor profile and its relationship to typing behavior. Our main goal is to inform future designs of touchscreen keyboards for elderly people. To this end, we asked 15 users to enter text under two device conditions (mobile and tablet) and measured their performance, both speed- and accuracy-wise. Additionally, we thoroughly analyze different types of errors (insertions, substitutions, and omissions) looking at touch input features and their main causes. Results show that omissions are the most common error type, mainly due to cognitive errors, followed by substitutions and insertions. While tablet devices can compensate for about 9% of typing errors, omissions are similar across conditions. Measured hand tremor largely correlates with text-entry errors, suggesting that it should be approached to improve input accuracy. Finally, we assess the effect of simple touch models and provide implications to design.
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paper_title: Design and Development of a Mobile Medical Application for the Management of Chronic Diseases: Methods of Improved Data Input for Older People

paper_content:

The application of already widely available mobile phones would provide medical professionals with an additional possibility of outpatient care, which may reduce medical cost at the same time as providing support to elderly people suffering from chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. To facilitate this, it is essential to apply user centered development methodologies to counteract opposition due to the technological inexperience of the elderly. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a mobile medical application to help deal with chronic diseases in a home environment. The application is called MyMobileDoc and includes a graphical user interface for patients to enter medical data including blood pressure; blood glucose levels; etc. Although we are aware that sensor devices are being marketed to measure this data, subjective data, for example, pain intensity and contentment level must be manually input. We included 15 patients aged from 36 to 84 (mean age 65) and 4 nurses aged from 20 to 33 (mean age 26) in several of our user centered development cycles. We concentrated on three different possibilities for number input. We demonstrate the function of this interface, its applicability and the importance of patient education. Our aim is to stimulate incidental learning, enhance motivation, increase comprehension and thus acceptance.
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paper_title: A Study on the Icon Feedback Types of Small Touch Screen for the Elderly

paper_content:

Small touch screens are widely used in applications such as bank ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, ticket vending machines, facsimiles, and home automation in the daily life. It is intuition-oriented and easy to operate. There are a lot of elements that affect the small screen touch performance. One of the essential parts is icon feedback. However, to merely achieve beautiful icon feedback appearance and create interesting interaction experience, many interface designers ignore the real user needs. It is critical for them to trade off the icon feedback type associated with the different users needs in the touch interaction. This is especially important when the user capability is very limited. This paper described a pilot study for identifying factors that determine the icon feedback usability on small touch screen in four older adult Cognitrone groups since current research aimed mostly at general icon guidelines and recommendations and failed to consider and define the specific needs of small touch screen interfaces for the elderly. In this paper, we presented a concept from the focus on human necessity and use a cognitive assessment tool, which is, Cognitrone test, to measure older adult's attention and concentration capability and learn more about how to evaluate and design suitable small screen icon feedback types. Forty-five elder participants were participated. Each subject was asked to complete a battery of Cognitrone tests and divided into 4 groups. Each subject was also requested to perform a set of `continuous touch' usability tasks on small touch screen and comment on open-ended questions. Results are discussed with respect to the perceptual and cognitive factors that influence older adults in the use of icon feedback on small touch screen. It showed significant associations between icon feedback performance and factors of attention and concentration. However, this interrelation was much stronger for the Group 2 and Group 4, especially for Type B, Type C and Type G. Moreover, consistent with previous research, older participants were less sensitive and required longer time to adapt to the high-detailed icon feedback. These results are discussed in terms of icon feedback design strategies for interface designers.
---
paper_title: Design pattern TRABING: touchscreen-based input technique for people affected by intention tremor

paper_content:

Tremor patients are frequently facing problems when interacting with IT systems and services. They do not reach the same levels of input efficiency and easily become unhappy with a technology they do not perceive as a general asset. Cases of Intention tremor show a significant comparative rise in inaccurate movement towards a real button or virtual buttons on touch screens, as this particular tremor increases its symptoms when approaching a desired physical target. People suffering from this specific tremor have been identified as the target group. This group has been closely investigated and thus, a new input procedure has been developed which may be used on standard touch screens. The new technique enables users, accordingly tremor patients, to fully operate IT-based systems and therefore possess full control over input. Deviations caused by the tremor are compensated with a continuous movement instead of a single targeted move which remains the most difficult task to the user. Also, the screen surface will present a frictional resistance, which significantly hinders tremor symptoms. Input can be identified by the computer system with high accuracy, by means of special heuristics, which support barrier free access beyond the target group.
---
paper_title: Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions

paper_content:

Smartphones with touchscreen-based interfaces are increasingly used by non-technical groups including the elderly. However, application developers have little understanding of how senior users interact with their products and of how to design senior-friendly interfaces. As an initial study to assess standard mobile touchscreen interfaces for the elderly, we conducted performance measurements and observational evaluations of 20 elderly participants. The tasks included performing basic gestures such as taps, drags, and pinching motions and using basic interactive components such as software keyboards and photo viewers. We found that mobile touchscreens were generally easy for the elderly to use and a week's experience generally improved their proficiency. However, careful observations identified several typical problems that should be addressed in future interfaces. We discuss the implications of our experiments, seeking to provide informal guidelines for application developers to design better interfaces for elderly people.
---

Title: Interaction techniques for older adults using touchscreen devices: a literature review

Section 1: INTRODUCTION
Description 1: Discuss the development of new technologies and their potential benefits for older adults, the usability challenges of traditional input devices, and the aim of this literature review.

Section 2: RELATED WORK
Description 2: Summarize previous literature reviews and studies concerning touchscreen interaction and older users, highlighting the benefits, challenges, and gaps in current research.

Section 3: METHODOLOGY
Description 3: Describe the selection criteria for the 24 studies reviewed, including the fields they were sourced from and the focus on touchscreen interaction with older adults.

Section 4: Population
Description 4: Detail the demographics of the populations studied, including age ranges, previous technology experience, and the types of impairments identified.

Section 5: Apparatus
Description 5: Provide information on the screen sizes and types of devices used in the studies, as well as their orientation, mounting, and touchscreen technologies.

Section 6: Feedback
Description 6: Summarize the types of feedback used in the studies, such as visual, audio, and tactile feedback, and their impact on user performance.

Section 7: Input techniques
Description 7: Discuss the various input techniques evaluated in the studies, including finger versus pen interaction, single touch versus multitouch, and comparisons with other input devices.

Section 8: Tasks
Description 8: Describe the different types of tasks used in the studies to evaluate touchscreen interaction, categorized into target selection, text or digit input, and gestures of interaction.

Section 9: Data collection
Description 9: Explain the types of quantitative and qualitative data collected in the studies, including error rates, completion times, subjective questionnaires, and observational data.

Section 10: Findings
Description 10: Summarize the key findings from the studies, including the effects of various input techniques on older adults' performance, common errors, user preferences, and the impact of feedback.

Section 11: Recommendations
Description 11: Provide recommendations derived from the studies for designing more ergonomic and user-friendly touchscreen interfaces and interaction techniques for older adults.

Section 12: CONCLUSION
Description 12: Recap the main insights from the literature review and outline the key parameters to consider when designing touchscreen interaction systems for older adults.