Are Senior Smartphones really better?

Abstract

Giving our aging society it seems important that technical devices be also adapted to elderly users. Espe-cially with smartphones there is a need for optimization (e.g. larger icons, simpler labels, etc.) as they may offer numerous benefits to senior citizens (e.g. more independence and security in everyday life). The goal of our work was to let seniors assess the usability of such an optimized smartphone and compare it to a conventional model. Participants were given ten tasks to be completed both with a “senior smartphone” (i.e. the emporiaSMART) and a conventional smartphone (i.e. the iPhone 5S). Collected data included performance measures (i.e. completion rate, error rate, issues and time per task) as well as pref-erence data (based on a questionnaire and a short interview). Results show that the senior-friendly smartphone did out-perform the conventional device in all categories. In particular the bigger icons and simpler navigation made the senior device be perceived more usable.