Abstract
Multifunctional home electric appliances enrich people's lives, but menu operation by remote control can be difficult, especially for the elderly, due to the devices' many functions. This paper presents an improved remote control unit for a popular DVD recorder. We focused on designing a menu structure that facilitates straightforward use of multiple functions. Using the Kawakita Jiro method and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), we constructed a mental model of elderly users which considers the flow of menu item selection. The menu structure was set on the basis of this model. A touchscreen interface was introduced to solve the problems of small buttons and the difficult-to-read letters printed thereon. We produced a prototype remote control that had a touchscreen display, and evaluated its usability for the elderly through a comparison with a commercial remote control.
