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KoalaPhone: touchscreen mobile phone UI for active seniors

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Abstract

We deal with a problem of designing a user interface for touchscreen phones with respect to special needs of seniors. We conducted qualitative study (\(\hbox {n}=5\)) followed by quantitative one (\(\hbox {n}=118\)). From the comparison of our study with existing studies we observed an obvious trend in more extensive usage of advanced features, which cannot be explained only by the shift of the younger seniors to older age groups. We provided a set of recommendations and we designed a new touchscreen phone user interface to support needs of active seniors. In comparison (\(\hbox {n}=15\)) with standard Android UI our solution had higher completion rate in two of four complex tasks and 6\(\times \) higher completion rate of all tasks while producing 2.4\(\times \) fewer errors. Our interface was subjectively perceived more comfortable, efficient and producing less errors.

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Notes

  1. BIG Launcher—http://biglauncher.com.

  2. EqualEyes—http://equaleyes.com.

  3. Protege Launcher SOS—http://goo.gl/HxmPRq.

  4. Wiser—http://www.wiser-me.com.

  5. Mobili—http://www.seniorsphone.mobi.

  6. Necta Launcher—http://www.necta.us/.

  7. KoalaPhone Launcher—http://goo.gl/74KJXg.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by the project Design of special user interfaces funded by Grant No. SGS13/213/OHK3/3T/13 (FIS 161—832130C000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jan Balata, Zdenek Mikovec & Tomas Slavicek

Authors
  1. Jan Balata
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  2. Zdenek Mikovec
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  3. Tomas Slavicek
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Correspondence to Jan Balata.

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Balata, J., Mikovec, Z. & Slavicek, T. KoalaPhone: touchscreen mobile phone UI for active seniors. J Multimodal User Interfaces 9, 263–273 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-015-0188-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-015-0188-1

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