Abstract:
The objective of this research was to study elderly users usage behavior and problems when using communication applications and to examine design factors affecting the efficiency in using the communication applications of the elderly. This research consisted of two steps: to study the behavior of old people using communication applications and to develop design guidelines for communication applications suitable for the elderly users. The first step used in-depth interviews and non-participant observation to collect data from sixteen participants. This sample group used LINE application to perform twelve activities. The research team analyzed the data by a visualization technique. Results of the analysis found that the elderly users having different gender and age did not show differences in the usage behavior of LINE. For the old users who had different number of years and frequency of use per week, most of them showed similar ability to carry out the activities except adding a friend from a mobile number, sending photos or videos, creating a chat group, and downloading stickers. Those with higher experience could conduct these four activities more successfully than the sample group with low experience. The elderly users who used different operating systems showed differences in the usage behavior. The second step asked about attitudes towards recommendations for designing LINE application from three sample groups, which were thirty old people, thirty people of the working age who had an experience using computer programs and mobile applications, and thirty people of the working age who solely had experience using mobile applications. Based on results of the questionnaire, this research offered guidelines for developing communication applications, for example, using symbols of icons conveying unambiguous meaning, using different symbols of icons for each menu, placing menus used by most users in a position that users can see, showing only relevant menus and sufficient number of menus on a user window, and so on. These guidelines were applicable to both the elderly group and the working age group having only experience using mobile applications. A particular guideline for the elderly was designing large fonts on a keypad.