Abstract
In recent years, non-contact type IC cards are commonly used as train-tickets and an electronic money devise. They look easy to use but still very different from conventional ways of use, and also look difficult to understand the concepts and mechanism and to get adequate mental models. In order to investigate how older adults learn usages and concepts of the non-contact IC cards, a field experiment was executed with 26 healthy older adults. While an initial instruction, three functions of the card (a commuter pass, an electronic train ticket, and electronic money) were progressively showed, and each function was accompanied with similar conventional artifacts, only for half of the participants. Behavior observations of gate-passing showed that most of participants learned the skill 'touch' from use, however, gaining information from the display and the charging were much more difficult and were effected by the knowledge of the similar artifacts.
