Eldre65: Creating a Website for Senior Adults Based Upon User Experience

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “Time and tide wait for no man.” He was correct. Aging is universal. It affects all humans in positive and negative ways. From children becoming teens to adults becoming senior adults, each stage of life brings changes and challenges. In one’s forties, menus can become harder to read, hair can fall out, hearing in loud environments can become difficult. Then, in one’s mid-sixties, more difficult challenges can arrive. Health issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, lung disease can become a regular part of one’s life. Cognition slowness, vision and hearing loss can create difficulties not only in interacting in social settings, but also managing one’s life online. Technology develops and expands constantly. Professor Peter-Paul Verbeek, distinguished Professor of Philosophy of Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Twente, examined how technology, in its purest form, should be a form of mediation for its users. Technology should not be the focus, it should be the median by which you relate to the world around you. “The central idea in mediation theory is that technologies do not simply create connections between users and their environment, but that they actively help to constitute them” (Verbeek). Technology influences the way the user sees the world around them. When made usable, technology can present large positives in an individual’s life. Technology can allow a viewer who is quarantined at home the opportunity to explore a new country. Technology can also bring shopping and banking to your fingertips. It can give the immobile user the freedom to be self-reliant. Medicine, food, and cleaning needs can all be purchased using many different technologies. A user can refill medications using a finger on a smart phone, smart watch, tablet, or computer. Or they can simply use their voice on technologies like Alexa, Echo, and Siri. Technology makes these possibilities endless. But for technology to do all these wonderful things, it needs to be designed and developed in a way that does not leave certain users behind. There must be a standard that designers follow to keep technology, specifically websites, usable and accessible to all. User inclusivity is the most important component that technology needs to focus upon, and where it is falling the most behind. If the user cannot see the words on the screen, hear a video on a site, or understand how to navigate through pages, then technology and all the wonderful things it can do are useless

Include 2011 : The role of inclusive design in making social innovation happen.

Include is the biennial conference held at the RCA and hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The event is directed by Jo-Anne Bichard and attracts an international delegation

Am I missing something? Experiences of using social media by blind and partially sighted users

People with a visual impairment are more likely to experience social isolation as an effect of their vision loss. Social media can particularly benefit these users, but it is of concern if it cannot be fully and successfully used. This study was instigated at the request of an advisory group of visual impaired users and experts. The aim of the study was to investigate potential accessibility issues visually impaired users could encounter when using social media. A major concern was over missing content embedded in images on social media sites. A subsequent evaluation of Facebook posts carried out by a group of student participants demonstrated that nearly half of images considered contained embedded text, which would be inaccessible to visually impaired users. Despite efforts by social media companies to improve accessibility, any text present in images is not presented in an accessible way to visually impaired users. This research demonstrated the inequality that can arise from partial accessibility and the requirement to consider accessibility at all stages of design and development

Engaging older adults with age-related macular degeneration in the design and evaluation of mobile assistive technologies

Ongoing advances in technology are undoubtedly increasing the scope for enhancing and supporting older adults’ daily living. The digital divide between older and younger adults, however, raises concerns about the suitability of technological solutions for older adults, especially for those with impairments. Taking older adults with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) – a progressive and degenerative disease of the eye – as a case study, the research reported in this dissertation considers how best to engage older adults in the design and evaluation of mobile assistive technologies to achieve sympathetic design of such technologies. Recognising the importance of good nutrition and the challenges involved in designing for people with AMD, this research followed a participatory and user-centred design (UCD) approach to develop a proof–of–concept diet diary application for people with AMD. Findings from initial knowledge elicitation activities contribute to the growing debate surrounding the issues on how older adults’ participation is initiated, planned and managed. Reflections on the application of the participatory design method highlighted a number of key strategies that can be applied to maintain empathic participatory design rapport with older adults and, subsequently, lead to the formulation of participatory design guidelines for effectively engaging older adults in design activities. Taking a novel approach, the final evaluation study contributed to the gap in the knowledge on how to bring closure to the participatory process in as positive a way as possible, cognisant of the potential negative effect that withdrawal of the participatory process may have on individuals. Based on the results of this study, we ascertain that (a) sympathetic design of technology with older adults will maximise technology acceptance and shows strong indicators for affecting behaviour change; and (b) being involved in the design and development of such technologies has the capacity to significantly improve the quality of life of older adults (with AMD)

Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

Software Usability

This volume delivers a collection of high-quality contributions to help broaden developers’ and non-developers’ minds alike when it comes to considering software usability. It presents novel research and experiences and disseminates new ideas accessible to people who might not be software makers but who are undoubtedly software users

Designing for disability: Guidance for designers when working with users with Specific, Critical, Additional Needs (SCAN)

This study provides guidelines to help designers make reasoned methodological choices when working with those that have disabilities, in order to enable the effective interpretation of the views of these users and to ensure that these are taken into account in the design of products and services. A new way of categorising such users led to a definition by the researcher of Specific, Critical, Additional Needs (SCAN). Individuals with SCAN have additional needs that have to be met in order to maintain their quality of life, health, safety and wellbeing but are additional to those of everyday critical needs. Following an extensive review of models of disability and design, together with the legal and social contexts (including public attitudes to disability), as well as resources from the design and ergonomics communities and existing research methods available to designers when working with SCAN users, it was found that there were relatively few studies that examined the appropriateness of methods for understanding the requirements of these users in design and evaluation processes. Through focus groups, advice was gathered from designers, some of whom were experienced in working collaboratively with disabled persons. Following this, several semi-structured interviews took place with a representative sample of SCAN users, carers, support workers, health and social care professionals and family members. Analysis of these interviews, backed by evidence from the literature, led to the creation of guidelines. The guidelines take account of best practice in designing from a user-centred viewpoint, and a number of tried and tested research methods are reviewed in detail. The study also highlights the range of disabilities that should be considered by designers in shaping specifications for new products and services, and the need to treat users appropriately to ensure an accurate account is taken of their needs