Abstract
There has been a steady growth in the global population of elderly people, challenging researchers in the HCI community to design technologies to help them remain independent and preserve their quality of life. One approach has been to create assistive technology solutions using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). However, some have questioned whether older people can use PDAs because of age related problems with dexterity, coordination, and vision. This paper presents an initial usability study that shows there are no major differences in performance between older and younger users when physically interacting with PDAs and completing conventional (e.g. pressing buttons, viewing icons, recording messages) and non-conventional tasks (e.g. scanning bar codes).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Kinsella, K., Velkoff, V.A.: An aging world: 2001. Technical report, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, and U.S. Census Bureau (2001)
Carmien, S., Gorman, A.: Creating distributed support systems to enhance the quality of life for people with cognitive disabilities. In: UbiHealth 2003 (2003)
Coroama, V., Rothenbacher, F.: The chatty environment - providing everyday independence to the visually impaired. In: UbiHealth 2003 (2003)
Helal, S., Giraldo, C., Kaddoura, Y., Lee, C.: Smart phone based cognitive assistant. In: UbiHealth 2003 (2003)
Czaja, S.J.: Computer technology and the older adult. In: Helander, M., Landauer, T., Prabhu, P. (eds.) Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edn., pp. 797–812. Elsevier Science, B.V. (1997)
Faye, E.E., Stappenbeck, W.: Normal changes in the aging eye (2000), http://www.lighthouse.org/aging_eye_normal.htm
Abascal, J., Civit, A.: Universal access to mobile telephony as a way to enhance the autonomy of elderly people. In: Proceedings of the 2001 EC/NSF Workshop on Universal Accessibility of Ubiquitous Computing: Providing for the Elderly (2001)
Newell, A., Gregor, P.: Accessibility and interfaces for older people - a unique, but many faceted problem. In: EC/NSF Workshop on Universal Accessibility of Ubiquitous Computing: Providing for the Elderly (2001)
Bernard, M., Liao, C., Mills, M.: The effects of font type and size on the legibility and reading time of online text by older adults. In: CHI 2001 (2001)
Jacko, J., Scott, I., Sainfort, F., Barnard, L., Edwards, P., Emery, V., Kongnakorn, T., Moloney, K., Zorich, B.: Older adults and visual impairment: What do exposure times and accuracy tell us about performance gains associated with multimodal feedback? In: CHI 2003 (2003)
Smith, M., Sharit, J., Czaja, S.: Age, motor control, and the performance of computer mouse tasks. Human Factors 41, 389–396 (1999)
Chaparro, A., Bohan, M., Fernandez, J., Choi, S.: The impact of age on computer input device - psychophysical and psychological measures. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 24, 503–513 (1999)
Charness, N., Bosman, E., Elliott, R.: Senior-friendly input devices: Is the pen mightier than the mouse? In: 103rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association Meeting, New York (1995)
Laursen, B., Jensen, B., Ratkevicius, A.: Performance and muscle activity during computer mouse tasks in young and elderly adults. European Journal of Applied Physiology 25, 167–183 (2001)
Maguire, M., Osman, Z.: Designing for older inexperienced mobile phone users. In: Stephanidis, C. (ed.) Proceedings of HCI International 2003, pp. 22–27. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (2003)
Intille, S.S., Tapia, E.M., Rondoni, J., Beaudin, J., Kukla, C., Agarwal, S., Bao, L., Larson, K.: Tools for studying behavior and technology in natural settings. In: Dey, A.K., Schmidt, A., McCarthy, J.F. (eds.) UbiComp 2003. LNCS, vol. 2864, pp. 157–174. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Mathiowetz, V., Kashman, N., Volland, G., Weber, K., Dowe, M., Rogers, S.: Grip and pinch strength: Normative data for adults. Arch. Phys. med. Rehabil. 66, 69–72 (1985)
Galganski, M., Fuglevand, A., Enoka, R.: Reduced control of motor output in a human hand muscle of elderly subjects during submaximal contractions. Journal of Neurophysicology 69, 2108–2115 (1993)
Moor, K.A., Connelly, K.H., Rogers, Y.: A comparative study of elderly, younger, and chronically ill novice pda users. Technical Report TR 595, Indiana University (2004)
Rhodes, N., McKeehan, J.: Palm OS Programming, 2nd edn. O’Reilly, Sebastopol (2002)
Czaja, S.J., Lee, C.C.: Designing Computer Systems for Older Adults. In: The Human Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications, pp. 413–425. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (2003)
Gick, M., Craik, F.I.M., Morris, R.G.: Task complexity and age differences in working memory. Memory and Cognition 16, 353–361 (1988)
Hall, A., Cunningham, J., Roache, R., Cox, J.: Factors affecting performance using touch-entry systems: tactual recognition fields and systems accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology 73, 711–720 (1988)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Siek, K.A., Rogers, Y., Connelly, K.H. (2005). Fat Finger Worries: How Older and Younger Users Physically Interact with PDAs. In: Costabile, M.F., Paternò, F. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2005. INTERACT 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3585. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11555261_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11555261_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-28943-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31722-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)