Research on interaction design of intelligent mobile phone for the elderly based on the user experience

Abstract

Whether in the developed or developing countries, aging of population has been a common global trend. With the development of the communication technology and the Internet era of prosperity, the elderly people also inevitably need to use modern communication products such as mobile phone so that they could keep contact with their family, children, the outside world, including quick call in case of an emergency etc. But the physiology and psychology of the elderly are very different from the young people, which mainly is reflected in the degradation of vision, hearing, touch, reaction ability, hand strength, text and graphics memory ability and so on. Thus when the elderly people are using the mobile phone there are a lot of inconvenience and special requirements by them and the user experience is also far different form the other age groups. Therefore, in the design of the mobile phone for the older age groups whether the appearance design or the interaction design should reflect on our care for this special group, to improve the usability of the product, to bring convenience for them. This paper firstly studies the physiological and psychological characteristics of the elderly. Then it analyses the behavior characteristics of the elderly in the use of mobile phone and the user experience. Moreover some principles and methods of interaction design for the elderly mo-bile phone are presented in this essay; Additionally through several practical cases of the mobile phone design for the elderly in China and by using the research method such as the user behavior analysis, user survey, Analysis of the availability of products, product evaluation, this paper will analyze and summarize the shortcomings of the current mo-bile phone for the elderly in interaction design. Finally this paper will not only point out the direction of improvement for the elderly mobile interaction design but also provide some useful suggestions and enlightenment for the elderly mobile phone design in the future.