Smartphone for the Elderly
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Problem
As part of a school project, our team was asked to create a smartphone interface for the elderly. While the volatile health and well-being of this population creates a need for reliable communication, portions of this group can be characterized by technological aversion and low technological readiness, which poses a problem both for usability and adoption.
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Goals
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Address user needs previously ignored by similar devices.
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Accommodate the behaviors unique to the user group.
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​My Role
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Helped conduct primary research through user interviews and secondary research by accumulating previous research in the field. I then helped to create actionable design insights from this research.
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Conceptual development of the system based on research findings.
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Designed task flows.
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Conducted some of the user testing to identify areas of potential improvement.
Research
We created an interview script geared at understanding key user tasks, experience with previous devices, and technological readiness. We analyzed the interview data using affinity diagramming. We then explored academic and professional literature on the topic of elderly users in the human-computer interaction domain.
After analyzing the data, we were able to distill our insights to identify five key user needs that are crucial to the success of our product:
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Contextual Help- Offer help based on what the user is trying to accomplish at the time.
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Accommodate aging physiology- Our user population has degrading senses. For example, the target sizes for buttons need to be larger than on a typical device. Also arthritis is a concern when determining the placement of the keyboard.
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Error prevention & recovery- Even though already a usability heuristic, our data indicates that our user group has unique trouble diagnosing errors, which affects how they are able to recover. Consequently, we need to take special measures to ensure errors don't happen and that users have a quick way out.
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Simplicity- Interface elements should do one thing (as opposed to different functions depending on whether a user taps or presses and holds). Additionally, only necessary functions need to be built in. We need to avoid adding 'nifty' functionality as this clutters the space.
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Emergency response- Our user group's volatile health creates concern for their families. We ought to provide peace of mind by leveraging a mobile communication device that provides seamless access to emergency services.
Personas
Design
We ideated around each of the five user needs to identify concepts and functions that might improve user experience in these key areas. After the brainstorm, we identified the most effective concepts we should focus on and develop for our wireframes. We focused on developing a comprehensive help system as well as a simplified texting interface.
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Sketches
Wireframes
Usability Testing
We performed user testing with the wireframes to identify weaknesses in our designs. We opted to observe users complete key tasks using the think-aloud method. We concluded each observation with an interview to explore observed phenomena. These semi-structured interviews added depth to our understanding of user performance and satisfaction. We performed a thematic analysis of observation and interview data to help us redesign and iterate.
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Key Findings:
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Understanding landscape view was problematic.
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The text entry screen was overwhelming.
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Call button next to Reply led to erroneous selections.
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Users could not recognize that images in text threads can be enlarged.
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Prototype- Iteration 1
Usability Testing- Iteration 2
We performed user testing with the same methodology as the first iteration: think-aloud and interviews.
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Some key findings:
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The color contrast between green and purple was not strong enough to be processed pre-attentively.
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It was difficult to know what was a button. Sometimes buttons are a color, sometimes they have a plain white background.
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Colors were not being used meaningfully.
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Message composition screen did not indicate for which contact a message was being composed.
Prototype- Iteration 2
Final Thoughts
Our research suggests that overall, we were able to reduce the complexity of various decision points throughout the task of texting. The most difficult part was only allowing a few functions to be available from a given point, but without requiring too much interaction to complete a task. Our usability tests suggest that we were able to make easier for willing users. Our technophobic user group still appears to be a difficult win. If we had the chance to continue working on this project, we would build out other key scenarios to see how our design language holds up during other tasks.