Elderly users & Mobile Phones: An explorative Study on Designing for Emotion & Aesthetic Experience :

Abstract:

This thesis aims to examine the role that non-instrumental aspects such as aesthetic and emotion play in elderly user interaction with mobile phones. It presents an analysis of the results from in-depth interviews with a selected group of Swedish elderly users, and discusses how the aesthetic experience which they yield in interacting with mobile phones could impact their preference, and their perceived usability of the devices.  A set of mobile phones, different in usability and aesthetic levels were presented to the group of elderly user in order to investigate how they perceive phones attributes, including appearance and general features, and different facets of their user experience, including their motivations of use, the involved emotions, desires, and concerns. The analyses revealed a possible existing correlation between non-instrumental aspects of elderly users’ interaction with mobile phones, and their preference to use those devices. While negative aesthetic experience as a result of social concerns had a strong negative influence on elderly’s perceived usability, and could consequently alter their preference, certain symbolic meanings in interaction such as the tendency to be modern, contributed to perceived ease-of-use & perceived usefulness of the mobile phones. Elderly user’s familiarity or earlier experience with a device or with the technology was found to be a confounding variable. However, in the presence of usability concerns, traditional factors of aesthetic went into the shadow, and therefore had no direct impact on users’ perceived usability of the device. A set of design solutions that would address elderly user’ both instrumental and non-instrumental concern, were proposed.