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Published in:
2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Age and Computer Skill Level Difference in Aging-Centered Design: A Case Study of a Social Type Website
Authors : Wen-Yu Chao, Qing-Xing Qu, Le Zhang, Vincent G. Duffy
Published in: Digital Human Modeling. Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics, and Risk Management: Health and Safety
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
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Abstract
According to the estimation of US Census Bureau, the age demographic will change from 13 percent of the population aged 65 and older in 2010 to 19 percent in 2030 [1]. With the fast growing number of elderly population, designers may be driven by market to consider an aging-centered design. However, the real challenge of aging-centered design may not only be the preference or interest by age difference but also the technology gap of using computer.
From the user testing results of a project on human-centered website design for elderly, we found out that elderly have lower performance than young people with a lower efficiency and a higher error rate. However, the difference wasn’t shown with a statistical significance because there’s a big in-between-group variance in elderly group. During the user testing process, an inconsistency of computer experience and skill level difference between elder users has been shown in their behavior. Some elderly with more computer experience show strong confidence in performing tasks independently and some totally rely on the guidance of experimenter. This result implies aging may not be the only factor affects user’s behavior in aging-centered design.
In this paper, we planned a 2 by 2 factorial experiment. Our goal is to carefully examine the effects of each factor and their interactions. From the experiment, we expect to have 2 key findings: (1) Computer skill level difference affects the performance and it is confounded with the age factor. (2) Users’ subjective perceived value of the website will affect users’ subjective rating of usability.
By this experiment, we could confirm that aging is not the only factor that prevents us from applying a universal design to different age groups. The emphasis on of aging-centered design may be highlighting the technology gap in between elderly.