Heuristics for Evaluating the Usability of Mobile Launchers for Elderly People

Abstract

Touch based mobile phone launchers are programs used by elderly people to ease their use of mobile phones. Despite their varieties in the mobile phone market, little has been done to evaluate their applicability to the target users. In this paper we describe a systematic approach to convert design guidelines and recommendations for touch-based phones into heuristics targeting elderly people. Then an assessment of the heuristics is carried out by creating personas and conducting usability evaluation.

Usability Study of Smart Phone Messaging for Elderly and Low-literate Users

“…Six Smartphone Launchers were introduced for the Elderly and did Heuristic evaluation [11]. The evaluation was classified into three categories firstly look and feel, secondly interaction and lastly functionality.…”

“…Navigation becomes very important when the system is used by the Elderly. Most of the time Elderly open apps and face problem to go back to previous state or face problem to close the app [1], [17], [11], [36], one application put the back button at the top of the page and another app put the back button at the bottom of the page [1], [11]. The back button should be the same place on every screen [17], [31].…”

“…The smartphone user interface should be comforting to do a task in a familiar, standard and consistent manner [1]. The labels and buttons are not marked correctly and not large enough to initiate or interact with [16][17], [31], font size and spacing is not consistence and appropriate [9], [11], [13][14], [16][17], icon size is small to read and icon symbol is not familiar [9], [12], [15][16][17], [20], objects color reflection and contrast is not visible (visual acuity) and does not fulfill the readability for the Elderly [6], [11][12][13], [17], [37]. Displaying content information of the apps sometimes creates confusion, there are different methods to display contents like vertical list, thumbnail list, fisheye list, carousel, grid and film stripe [6], [11].…”

“…There are two types of touch interaction supported by smartphones, the first one is a single touch and the second one is multi-touch [39]. Smartphone usability measurement is different because touch screen allows direct interaction using fingers to register a button press by objects (button text and icon), moreover smaller object leads to finger occlusion and wrong point of the press [6], [11], [14], [40]. The Elderly always target to press the target button but due to motor problem, they press outside of the target object and press the target object more or less time it needs to register the request [7], [14], [18], [25], [40][41].…”

“…According to the World Health Organization, the world's population will cross two billion who's age is sixty over by 2020 [8], [9]. Among them, those who are over eighty years having movement and motor problems, moreover some users having motor problems after fifty years [10][11]. Most of these Elderly and Low-literate users do not use the smartphone.…”