Examining the usability of touch screen gestures for elderly people

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study to assess the capabilities of older adults to interact with multi-touch surfaces. The study involved 100 elderly people between 61–92 years old. We selected two different elderly centres in Madrid, with different characteristics in terms of income level. The “Gesture Games” tool was used because it allows experimenting with the seven more used multi-touch gestures: Tap, Double tap, Long press, Drag, Scale up, Scale down and One-finger rotation. The analysis of the data showed that older adults have total capacity to execute these seven tasks. Some of the tasks, such as “scale down” and “scale up” were found easier for them, while other tasks, such as “double tap” were more difficult.