The best paper award of Interact’11 was dedicated to the paper “Eldery User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interaction”. This paper, published by Kobayashi et al., presents the characteristics of touchscreen interaction for elderly users.
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The authors conducted an experiment with 20 elderly users, from 60 to 70 years old, to evaluate the touchscreen interaction with tablets (iPad) and with mobile phones (iPhone). The tasks included gestures such as: taps, drags, and pinching motions. The analysis of the results allowed to generate a set of guidelines for developers of graphical user interfaces for the eldery concerning the touchscreen interaction:
- Use larger targets (at least 8 mm) for interactive objects, such as buttons, icons and links
- Address the gap between intended and actual touch location
- Prefer drag and pinch gestures rather than taps
- Explicitly display the current mode, provide readable feedback
Additional investigation of the similarities and differences between younger and older users in their performances, behaviors, and preferences might help the design of universal interfaces that satisfy users of all ages.
The results showed that touchscreen mobile interfaces are preferred and not too difficult to use, even by the elderly.
Further information about the experiment can be found in the original article: “Kobayashi, M., Hiyama, A., Miura, T., Asakawa, C., Hirose, M., and Ifukube, T. Elderly User Evaluation of Mobile Touchscreen Interactions. INTERACT 2011, LNCS 6946, Springer, September 2011, 83-99.”
