Receivers used for digital broadcasting, which provides many channels and services, will be more sophisticated than conventional receivers. This additional functionality may permit or may require new types of remote controls to be used. To investigate the conditions under which remote control devices are easy to operate, we performed remote controls operation tests with elderly subjects in a GUI environment. The results of this subjective evaluation showed that the elderly people preferred trackball remote controls to conventional remote controls with buttons. By analyzing the operating time and observing the subjects' operation of four types of remote controls, we found that subjects tended to prefer those controls : which they could use without having to look down, and for which there was a significant learning effect within a relatively short period.
It was clear that even elderly users could adapt easily to novel devices under such conditions.
