Beyond Age Stereotype: Improving Elderly-Oriented User Experience of Social Media by Value Sensitive Design

Abstract

With the increasing use of social media by older adults, age stereotypes have become a problem that cannot be ignored. A lot of studies have shown that age stereotypes have a negative impact on the Internet engagement and performance of the older adults. In order to promote the older adults engage into modern digital life, elderly-oriented social media reform has become an effective means. Value sensitive design is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process. In this study, we try to build an elderly-oriented social media design framework based on value sensitive design. We try to find the exclusive values that the older adults really care about beyond the age stereotype. We hope that this research can provide designers with an idea, that is, breaking the age stereotype and integrating elderly-oriented design into every stage of social media design.