The Use of Mobile Technology by Elderly People

7/27/2019 The Use of Mobile Technology by Elderly People

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INFO 3401 - HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION, SECTION 1: GROUP PROJECT 1

The Use of Mobile Technology by Elderly PeopleAmjad M.R. Alzeeralhouseini(0820413), Khalid Osman Jabir(0831977), Fuad Osman Jabir(0825159)

Mohammed Omar Mubarak(0826349) and Mohammad Khalid Hussain(0913091)

Abstract This paper discusses the Human Computer Interac-tion aspect of the use of mobile technology by elderly people.It starts off with conducting a PACT analysis on the scenario athand, i.e. the interaction of elderly people with mobile technology.The data referenced was collected by conducting two differentsets of interviews, one being on an individual basis and the otherbeing a focus-group interview with elderly people roughly aroundthe age of sixty. The paper then analyses this data qualitativelyand quantitatively to extract some valuable information which isthen discussed.

Keywords elderly, mobile, phone, technology, interaction.

I. INTRODUCTION

THE expanding power of computers and the recent growthof information technologies such as mobile phones and

tablets have made it possible to have direct access to a widerange of information sources and services for large number of people. The usage of network is expanding and new interfaces,search engines, and features are becoming available at anunprecedented rate. Coupled with the explosion of technologyis the aging of the population.

As people age, their abilities change for the worse, i.e. theydecline, and this is mainly due to biological reasons[1][2].Motor skills decline has the most serious effect on theinteraction of elderly people with mobile technology[1].Unfortunately mobile technology has been slow to cater to theneeds of elderly people[4][6]. Mobile technology especiallyfrom the human interaction aspect has mostly focused on theyoung adult and prime adults despite accessibility optionspresent on most mobile phones. Recently there is a trendin research towards improving human computer interactionbetween elderly people and mobile technology and this maybe due to the increase in population of elderly people as livingconditions improve and social welfare becoming increasinglyeasily accessible[7].

The increase in population of elderly people is good enoughof a reason to ensure that they may remain connected in thisincreasingly networked world also known as the global village.Besides connectivity, it also helps in the social aspects of the

lives of elderly people as they are able to easily communicatewith members of their family and the society around them. Andthus interest in this research eld would yield much positiveresults.

II . PACT A NALYSIS A. People

Given that older people (60 years old and above) representan increasing large proportion of the population and will need

to be active users of technology, issues around ageing andusing new technologies are of critical importance within therealm of human computer interaction (HCI).

To ensure the ability of senior adults to adapt to the newinformation environment, we need to focus on and understandthe implications of age-related changes in functional abilitiesfor the design and implementation of technology systems,the needs and preferences of older adults with respect to thedesign of technology interfaces and software applications,and the problems and challenges faced by older adults whenadopting new information technologies.

Several age-related changes in functional abilities of olderpeople have relevance to the design of new technologiesi.e. smart phones and tablets. These include changes insensory/perceptual processes, motor abilities, response speed,and cognitive processes. There are substantial individualdifferences in rate and degree of functional change whichare important to recognize. There is signicant variabilityin range of abilities within any age group, young or old,and this variability tends to escalate as the person grows older.

A number of changes in visual abilities have relevance tothe design of information technology systems. Currently, a lotof people suffer from some type of visual impairment, andthe incidence of visual impairment increases with age.

Generally, with increased age, there is a loss of static anddynamic visual acuity. Aged adults also experience a reductionin the range of accommodation, a loss of contrast sensitivity,drop-off in dark adaptation, declines in color sensitivity(especially in the blue region), and heightened susceptibilityto problems with glare. Although most older people will notexperience severe visual impairments, they may experiencedeclines in eyesight sufcient to make it more difcultto perceive and comprehend visual information. This haswide implications for the design of information technologysystems given that most new technologies communicationsare essentially based on visually presented text.

Also associated with changes in motor skills, is ageing anthats including slower response times, declines in ability tomaintain continuous movements, disruptions in coordination,loss of exibility, and greater variability in movement.

Age-related changes in cognition also have relevance to theperformance of computer-based tasks. It is well establishedand known that component behaviours comprising cognitiondecline with age. Processes that decline include attention


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processes, working memory, discourse comprehension,problem solving and reasoning, inference formation andinterpretation, and encoding and retrieval in memory. Ageingis also associated with declines in information processingspeed. Older people tend to take longer to process incominginformation and typically require a longer time to respond aswell.

B. Activity

As noted, there are a number of settings where olderpeople are likely to encounter computers and other forms of communication technologies, such as the Internet, includingthe workplace, the home, healthcare, and service settings.However, despite a trend toward increased computer useamong older people, use of computers and other forms of technology is still lower among older people as compared toyounger people.

Most elderly people (60 years and older) have computersat home. Similarly although the use of Internet among olderpeople is widening, it is still lower than that of youngergeneration. Furthermore, people aged 60 and above are muchless likely than younger people to have a high-speed Internetconnection. In addition, seniors who do use the Internet tendto be, mostly, highly educated, and living in householdswith higher incomes. Also older adults are less likely thanyounger adults to use other forms of technology such asATMs (automatic teller machines) or DVD Players and thatgeneral use of technology is a predictor of use of computersand use of the Internet.

Lack of technology use for older adults puts themat a disadvantage in terms of their abilities to live and

function independently and to successfully negotiate the builtenvironment. Furthermore, older population may not realizethe full benets of new technologies. Technology holds greatpotential for improving the quality of life for older people.For example, computer networks can facilitate and easeup linkages between older adults and healthcare providersand with family members and friends, especially thosewho are living abroad or apart from their families. Clearly,network linkages can make it easier for family members tocommunicate, especially those who live in different timezones. Some new technologies may also be used to helpolder people communicate with healthcare providers or otherolder people and may help older people become involved incontinuing education. For example, tele-medicine applicationsallow communication directly between healthcare providersand patients. There are also vast opportunities for enrollingin distance learning courses online. Future developments inmultimedia and video conferencing technologies will, forsure, enhance more of these opportunities.

Technology and the Internet might also be helpful for olderpeople accessing information about resources and communityservices. The Internet may also be used in facilitating the

performance of routine tasks such as nancial managementor shopping. Access to these resources and services may beparticularly benecial for older people who have mobilityrestrictions or lack of transportation. Finally we can see thattechnology is clearly becoming an integral component of oureveryday lives.

C. Context There are a number of ways older people can use computers

at home to enhance their independence and qualities of life.Home computers can provide access to information andservices and can facilitate the performance of tasks suchas banking and grocery shopping. Many older people haveproblems performing these tasks because of restricted mobility,lack of transportation, inconvenience, and fear of crime. Forexample, about 13% of older people report restrictions inperforming activities such as shopping. Home computerscan also be used to expand educational, recreational, andcommunication opportunities.

Several studies have shown that older adults are receptiveto using e-mail as a form of communication and that e-mailis effective in increasing social interaction among the elderly.Increased social connectivity can also be benecial for olderpeople especially those who are isolated or live alone.

D. Technology

One issue that warrants discussion when considering ageand information technology is the degree to which olderpeople are willing to interact with these types of systems andthe factors that inuence technology adoption. A commonlyheld belief is that older people are resistant to change andunwilling to interact with high-tech products. However, the

available data largely disputes this stereotype. The majorityof studies that have examined the attitudes of older peopletoward computer technology indicate that older people arereceptive to using computers. However, older people do reportmore computer anxiety, less computer self-efcacy, and lesscomfort using computers than younger adults. Furthermore,computer anxiety and computer self- efcacy are importantpredictors of technology adoption. However, the data alsoindicated that attitudes toward technology and comfort usingtechnology are inuenced by experience and the nature of interactions with computer systems as well as system design.

Several studies showed that people who had experiencewith computers had more positive attitudes and greatercomputer condence. Other studies showed that the nature of the experience with technology inuences attitudes towardthat technology. For example, in a study examining agedifferences in acquisition of word-processing skills, the resultsshowed that post training attitudes were related to the trainingexperience such that people who rated the training experienceand their own performances positively also had more positivepost training attitudes toward computers.


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In summary, this is what the analysis achieved:

Analysis Description

People Elderly people around 60 years or older.

ActivityUtilization of cellular services such as mak-ing calls and sending messages specicallyand mobile technology in general.

Context

Elderly people due to the decline in theirabilities nd it hard to utilize mobile tech-nology. Mobile technology generally focuseson the younger generation as is evident fromthe mobile market.

Technology Mobile Cellular Technology in particular.

III. Q UANTITATIVE A NALYSIS

The participants of the focus group were recruitedthrough appointments made by our group members in theInternational Islamic University, Malaysia. All the participantsin this groups were aged at least 60 years. Besides the agerequirement, they were also required to have at least someprior information or experience with mobile phone technology.

The recruitment approach, unfortunately, has led to agender-biased sample of senior men and the interviewerswere three HCI students from the Kulliyah of ICT. Focusgroup discussions were used in this study because theyhave been proven to be very effective in taking intoconsideration interviewees attitudes, feelings, reactions,belief and experiences in a way which could not have beenpossible using any other method(s)[3].

Three older men participated in the focus group discussions

(median age = 58.5 years old), all of whom are currentlyuniversity professors who have graduated from elds of Engineering and are thus well-educated.

The discussions normally started with open-ended questionssuch as What problems do you have with your currentdevice? or Can you tell me about the usage of the device?The results of the discussions are summarized as follows.

Usage patterns of older people show that they would mostlikely just use mobile phones or in some cases an Internettablet. Two out of three of the participants used their mobilephones for just making phone calls and sending text messageswhere the other one also used the Internet on his phone to surf the Internet and check his email. In fact the participants mostlycalled their family members and very rarely their friends. Theyrarely used SMS (Short Messaging Service) as they believedit ruined literacy (that is the effect on ones vocabulary andgrammar). However they said that they try to understand mostof the jargon in the messages their grandchildren send them(e.g., c u = see you). From their experience with mobilephones, some of the problems they felt they had with mobiledevices were:

Keyboard is too small and letters are too close to eachother and the use of one button for inputting multipleletters.

They favoured metallic buttons or the normal keyboardsrather than rubbery buttons due to the feedback theyreceived from presses.

The lack of knowledge of using mobile application(s) orfunction(s) besides the basic functions such as Calendar

or SMS application. Devices and screens which are either too small or unable

to be read comfortably.

IV. Q UALITATIVE A NALYSISDespite the quantitative analysis not being accurate as we

had selected a small sample of participants, it never the lessgave us an insight into the situation in which some of ourtheories coincided with reality. It is these theories that we canuse for a qualitative analysis of the situation.

Firstly, screen size on mobile phones is one of the commoncomplaints by elderly people and this is most likely due to

the degradation of eyesight due to ageing which is knownto many. It is indeed inconvenient for one to always wearspectacles when trying to view a mobile device and thisbecomes even worse when one is on the move and if one alsosuffers from short-sightedness.

Secondly, the buttons present on mobile devices posea challenge to elderly people. There are various concernssuch as the size of keys, spacing between the keys and thematerial of the keys. Size of the keys and the material of thekeys almost seem like a universal problem and this could beattributed to the degradation of eyesight as explained earlierand the inconvenience of undoing an action once a button ispressed[4].

Thirdly, we believe that the cost of mobile devices is ahuge factor in elderly people adopting mobile technologyand this may be due to the previous two factors. This is sobecause including a large screen on a device dramaticallyincreases its price and also puts a much greater drain onbattery life which defeats the purpose in the rst place, whichis to reduce inconvenience.

Thus we can say that some of the problems we discoveredthrough our interviews are well known whereas there weresome problems that were new and that may be due to the everchanging nature of technology.

V. D ISCUSSION AND C ONCLUSIONWe have to say that the study did not fall short of our

assumptions and expectations. Some of the problems thatold people would have that we theorized came into fruition,however there were some new problems which we were notaware of such as the type of keys they preferred. Generally thestudy was successfully in conrming some of our theories butdue to the small sample, we could not conclude other factors


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into the equation. Factors such as education of participants(not just literacy), whether time of usage affected adoptionof new technologies (if they had been using a phone formore than 10 years of their life, would they adopt to newtechnologies such as 3G access easily?),and nally whethercomputer literacy helps or not (some mobile phones utilizeQWERTY keyboards which are the same ones used for mostcomputers).

There were also some other aspects which were not covereddue to the limited nature of the interviews and questionnairebut what we did obtain conrmed our theories and got usthinking about the eld from different aspects.

R EFERENCES

[1] M. Mahmud and S. H. Kurniawan, Involving Psychometric Tests for Input Device Evaluation with Older People , School of Informatics, Universityof Manchester, Manchester, UK, 2005.

[2] M. Mahmud, A Mixed Method for Evaluating Input Devices with Older Persons , School of Informatics, University of Manchester, Manchester,UK, 2006.

[3] Gibbs, A. Focus Groups. Social Research Update 19 , Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK, 1997.

[4] M. Mahmud, S. H. Kurniawan and Y. Yanuar Nugroho, A Study of theUse of Mobile Phones by Older Persons , University of Manchester,Manchester, UK, 2006.

[5] S. J. Czaja and C. C. Lee, Information Technology and Older Adults ,University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA,

[6] H. Hassan, M. Hairul Nizam Md Nasir, The use of Mobile Phones byOlder Adults: A Malaysian Study , University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia, 2008.

[7] World Health Organization, Global Health and Aging , National Instituteon Aging, National Institute of Health, USA, 2011.

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The Use of Mobile Technology by Elderly People