The Effect of Dyadic Interactions on Learning Rotate Gesture for Technology-Naïve Older Adults

Abstract

Older adults having limited experience with modern computing technology may find it difficult to learn touch gestures, especially the more complex rotate gesture. Social interactions, as implied by social constructivism, are assumed to be powerful in enabling older adults to acquire the skill of touch gestures. The social effect can be reinforced with the motivational effect of digital games. To verify the assumption, we conducted empirical studies with 59 older adults, who were divided into two groups: 17 Singles and 21 Dyads. They were asked to play a set of digital games on a multi-touch tabletop. Results show that on average Dyads have spent significantly longer time in the games and have performed a significantly higher number of correct rotate gestures than Singles. Future work focuses on analyzing the emotional aspect of social interactions and identifying further applications of social gaming to other ageing issues.

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“…Two participants (aged 66 and 70) expressed that they found the animated representations of gestures to be useful but preferred text instructions because they did not want to wait for the entire animation to be complete to make a gesture. Equally, other older adults may find animations too fast due to age-related declines in cognitive processing [17] [19].…”

“…Recent studies have been focusing on finding coherent, easy and intuitive mid-air gestures for different interaction contexts [2] [6][17] [19] but little research has focused on investigating the most effective way of providing to novice users instructions on how to make those gestures once they have already been incorporated in an interface. As yet, the learnability of gesture commands by novice users is still a challenging aspect of gesture-based interfaces [9], and older adults (aged 60+) face even greater challenges when interacting with this novel input method [2].…”

An analysis of social interaction between novice older adults when learning gesture-based skills through simple digital games

“…The use of direct touch-based interaction facilitates a rapid and natural mapping between intentions and actions, even in initial exploratory action phases. Mihajlov, Law and Springett [28] suggest that older learners can rapidly acquire drag and rotate skills in early game-based interaction. We anticipated that similar rapid learning of a variety of drag/ relate/tap actions would be achieved by participants.…”

Learning to Drag: The Effects of Social Interactions in Touch Gestures Learnability for Older Adults

“…Gajadhar et al [13] found that for older adults social playing with physical presence provides a greater level of satisfaction over online playing, with the least positive experience noted as playing against a virtual opponent. Social interaction is also an important factor for time spent on gaming for older adults [29].…”