Empirical study on the relevance of factors influencing readability of instruction manuals for elderly

Abstract

Demographic Change leads to an increase of elderly users relying on supportive systems, such as "E-Health Assistants". Acceptance and ease of use of those systems are highly dependent on an age-appropriate design. Especially readability of instructions should be taken into account in this respect, since users find themselves confronted with the manual as soon as questions concerning the system arise. There has only been little research on the relevance of different factors influencing readability of manuals for elderly. The objective of this research was to evaluate the relevance of temporal iconicity, linguistic factors (foreign words, signal words, active/passive voice), and layout factors (visual emphasis of keywords, visual structuring through sequences) in the context of written instructions. An empirical survey was designed in which 45 elderly participated voluntarily. 4x3 instructions were presented to the subjects. The task was to execute those instructions accordingly as correct and quickly as possible. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin.