Older adults have a difficult relationship with technology mostly because hardware and software design have simply not been designed to suit them. For a large part of the old population, technology is unfamiliar and “alien” and even when elderly people perceive the potentials of technologies, they consider the investment of personal resources needed to use a new artefact too high. The language spoken by technology is unfamiliar to elderly people because it depends on a series of elements that are out of their culture. In the present paper we tried to define a design approach based on familiarity, investigating how to translate technology language into the language familiar to those individuals grown up before the technological revolution.
Designing a Familiar Technology For Elderly People
Leonardi, Chiara;Mennecozzi, Claudio;Not, Elena;Pianesi, Fabio;Zancanaro, Massimo
2008-01-01
Abstract
Older adults have a difficult relationship with technology mostly because hardware and software design have simply not been designed to suit them. For a large part of the old population, technology is unfamiliar and “alien” and even when elderly people perceive the potentials of technologies, they consider the investment of personal resources needed to use a new artefact too high. The language spoken by technology is unfamiliar to elderly people because it depends on a series of elements that are out of their culture. In the present paper we tried to define a design approach based on familiarity, investigating how to translate technology language into the language familiar to those individuals grown up before the technological revolution.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
