Facets of Prior Experience and Their Impact on Product Usability for Older Users

Prior experience is one of the main factors influencing the performance of older adults with technology. Products that better match the prior experience of their users increase the speed and effectiveness of interaction (Czaja and Sharit, 1993; Langdon

et al.

, 2007; Lewis

et al.

, 2008; Blackler

et al.

, 2009; Fisk

et al.

, 2009). These findings suggest that in order to design successful and usable products, designers need to establish the level of prior experience in their respective target user groups. Unfortunately, the concept of technology experience is ill-defined and used inconsistently across studies (Smith

et al.

, 1999; Garland and Noyes, 2004). A number of different definitions and operationalisations of experience exist (

e.g.

Thompson

et al.

, 1994; Potosky and Bobko, 1998; Smith

et al.

, 1999; Garland and Noyes, 2004; Smith

et al.

, 2007) but the differing power of these operationalisations to predict the usability of products for older users has rarely been investigated systematically. This study seeks to fill that gap in exploring the impact of different such operationalisations of experience on the usability of an interactive system. It is argued that technology experience as it relates to inclusive design has at least three components. It is proposed that two of these components, exposure and competence, are directly relevant for the current discussion about prior experience in inclusive design and that they can predict to different degrees the usability of a product for older users. In an empirical study these facets of expertise are each operationalised on three levels of specificity, their impact on usability is assessed, and implications for future research are drawn.