2011 Volume 61 Issue 6 Pages 303-312
In response to aging societies around the world, there is an increasing need to develop and design equipment oriented towards elderly users. However, in the field of IT equipment, consideration of the cognitive characteristics of elderly users is still insufficient. In order to design equipment that is elderly-friendly, it is essential to develop clear design principles based not only on perceptual and physio-motor characteristics, but also on the cognitive characteristics of older adults. In this paper, a usability test was applied to automatic teller machines (ATMs), a typical example of IT equipment that is not elderly-friendly. Through analyzing the interaction between the elderly and ATMs, some cognitive and behavioral characteristics of older adults were extracted. Based on these cognitive/behavioral characteristics and principles for healthy aging, new guidelines (design principles) were created recommended for use when developing elderly-friendly IT equipment.
