Never too old to use a tablet: Designing tablet applications for the cognitively and physically impaired elderly

Abstract

People live longer than ever before and the population of elderly is increasing. Many elderly visit day care centres in order to avoid loneliness and continuously look for new methods of entertainment. A possible new mean of entertainment can be found in the use of tablet applications. However, due to the physical and/or cognitive impairments of these elderly, most tablet applications are not accessible. This research tries to design an elderly-friendly entertainment application. Several design guidelines were determined via a literature review and a contextual inquiry for the design of three prototypes. These prototypes successfully eliminated problems concerning button size, navigation, readability of the fonts and swiping. Furthermore, results indicated that the elderly had a strong preference for the design which had a low number of icons, a more direct way of giving information, no deep hierarchy, larger buttons with immediate feedback when pressed, a clear notification that the screens had changed and the screens which used bright colours were more effective. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.