It is necessary to investigate the ways in which designs for the use of artifacts created by information technology (IT) can improve the quality of life of older adults who use these devices. The present research investigated how older adults learned to use mobile phones in daily life; it focused on the effects that families may exert on the acquisition of this kind of knowledge. A 3-week experiment was conducted with 11 users who had no previous experience using mobile phones. For half of the participants, their household comprised only a spouse; the households of the remaining participants comprised three generations, including children and grandchildren. The results showed that learning to use mobile phones was facilitated in participants living in households with larger families, particularly those living with younger generations. The findings suggest that differences in users' social environments create differences in the levels of use of the technology. The results are discussed in terms of the effects of family structure on older adults learning new technology.j pr_434 244..255

Although design universalities have generally been validated through analyses of human-artifact interactions, older adults frequently exhibit difficulties in using many types of IT-based equipment compared with younger adults. We hypothesize that the age-group difference is due to inefficient learning by the older adults, who are affected by declines in their cognitive functions, including episodic memory. In pursuing this hypothesis and exploring ways to compensate for such learning inefficiency, Experiment 1 was conducted to examine learning to use a piece of IT equipment (a diet-support system, WELLNAVI) with four different designs. The results indicated that older adults had difficulties in learning to use the equipment compared with younger adults. However, comparisons between the four designs revealed that eliminating some decision requirements facilitated learning in the older adults, and that presenting information in a printed book, rather than via computer, also promoted learning. The results of Experiment 2, investigating why the printed format facilitated learning in the older adults, suggest that the task-structure information physically represented in the book format is effective for learning.j pr_440 227..243Key words: cognitive aging, learning inefficiency, design of human-artifacts interaction.Currently, many Western and Westernized societies are undergoing two kinds of drastic changes: one is the aging of society, and the other is an increasing dependency on information technology (IT). The occurrence of these two phenomena ushers in special problems, particularly for older adults with respect to their ability to accommodate to new IT-based equipment or systems. It is broadly claimed that older adults generally have difficulties using IT-based artifacts. This has been widely verified in research in which different age groups are tested for performances in using IT equipment; compared with young adults, the performance of older adults is poorer (Hara, Naka, & Harada, 2009). Based on these and related results using various IT-based artifacts, Harada and Akatsu (2003) proposed a three-layered model for cognitive aging and usability problems. Recently, this model has been restructured into a four-layered model (Harada, 2009).The new four-layered model (Figure 1) includes three layers described in the initial

A psychological experiment was conducted to explore the relationship between design features of physical controllers and perceived multiple meanings or possible operations by users. In particular, we focused on affordances and informatives, two semantic clues derived from product semantics, to find out how these clues affect users’ perceptions. The results indicated that both desired shapes, text, and icon could encourage and discourage the perception of specific operations. Those empirical data could be useful for product designers in communicating effectively with users through their products.

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