We have our HCI group meeting tomorrow at 12:30 PM at DGP Seminar room.
Mingming Fan is going to present his paper on creating senior-friendly
product instructions for tech devices. The paper is accepted to ACM
Transactions on Accessible Computing and is invited to be presented at the
annual ASSETS conference. Please drop by and know about this pretty cool
work. Lunch will be provided during the meeting.
--
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat
Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto.
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~rifat/
Abstract of the paper--
Although older adults feel generally positive about technologies, many face
difficulties when using them and need support during the process. One
common form of support is the product instructions that come with devices.
Unfortunately, when using them, older adults often feel confused,
overwhelmed or frustrated. In this work, we sought to address the issues
that affect older adults’ ability to successfully complete tasks with
product instructions. By observing how older adults used the product
instructions of various devices, and how they made modifications to
simplify the use of the instructions, we identified eleven guidelines for
creating senior-friendly product instructions. We validated the usability
and effectiveness of the guidelines, by evaluating how older adults used
instruction manuals that were modified to adhere to these guidelines,
against the originals and those that were modified by interaction design
researchers. Results show that overall, participants had the highest task
success rate, lowest task completion time when using them. Participants
also perceived these instructions to be the most helpful, most
easy-to-follow, most complete, and most concise among the three. In the
end, we compared the guidelines derived from this research to existing
documentation guidelines and discussed potential challenges of applying
them.