Research on Sticker Cognition for Elderly People Using Instant Messaging

Abstract

Elderly people neglected by relatives or friends have a poor social network and are thus lonely. Such loneliness can be alleviated through diverse Internet-based communication methods. Specifically, elderly people can effectively connect with their friends, relatives, children, and grandchildren if they can use instant messaging programs on smartphones. However, elderly people face health-related physical difficulties and loss of memory. Therefore, determining elderly people’s needs and their ability to effectively understand instant messages is imperative. Accordingly, this study explored elderly people’s perceptions and cognition of instant messaging software stickers. According to the results of a survey conducted in this study, stickers were designed to meet elderly people’s communication requirements. Testing was conducted to verify whether the elderly could use the stickers appropriately.

First, this study explored the problem of social connection for elderly people from the perspective of human care and applied contextual inquiry to under-stand problems encountered by elderly people when using smartphones. Subsequently, the study designed instant messaging stickers. Sticker card sorting was used to study how elderly users use the designed instant messaging stickers. A semantic design method was used to design the stickers. This method entails assigning meanings to images and increases the ability of expressing emotions by using cartoon characters. The study results revealed that the semantic sticker design method could enable elderly users to effectively understand emotions conveyed by stickers without requiring textual descriptions.