Features

• Provides information about the fundamental changes in perception and cognition that tend to come with aging and to directly link this information to their effect on the use of displays and interfaces by older adults
• Identifies aspects of displays that may be sensitive to age-related differences in perception (vision and hearing), cognition, and movement ability and suggest ways to compensate for such age-related changes
• Covers how to perform usability tests with older adults, including recruitment, retaining users for future tests, and simulating their experiences for the designers working on the product
• Provides brief, worked examples of age-sensitive design and evaluation of displays
• Includes guidelines about design based on vision, audition, movement, and cognition in the aging population
• Stresses the importance of a user profile that encapsulate the capabilities and limitations of the target user, answering the questions of what users can do and what they want from the system
• Discusses a range of displays and their accompanying interfaces that are frequently used by older adults

Summary

Literally hundreds of papers have been written about interface issues experienced by older adults, but how many actually influence the designs older adults use? The sheer number of articles available, the fast pace of the industry, and time constraints combine to build barriers to knowledge transfer from theory into practice. A distillation of decades of published research, Designing Displays for Older Adults is a primer on age-related changes in cognition, perception, and behavior organized into meaningful principles that improve understanding.

Using theory backed up by evidence provides an understanding of why we see certain problems with many displays and often predicts solutions. This understanding surpasses an individual interface and provides practitioners with ways to plan for older adults on multiple display types. Based on this, the book delineates the theories, then explores how to apply them in real design exercises, providing specific guidelines for display examples that bridge theory and practice. The authors explore the complex set of mental and physical changes that occur during aging and that can affect technology acceptance, adoption, interaction, safety, and satisfaction.

This book provides a fundamental understanding of age related change and explores how such information can influence design from the very beginning stages, rather than waiting for testing to reveal the problems users have with the product. The authors open the way for designing with an understanding of these changes that results in better products and systems for users in all life stages.