AN INITIAL USABILITY EVALUATION OF SOME WORD-PROCESSING FUNCTIONALITIES WITH THE ELDERLY

Sergio Sayago, Josep Blat

2007

Abstract

This short paper addresses two key questions about evaluating the usability of word-processing functionalities with the young elderly: (i) which factor (difficulties understanding the terminology, remembering the steps and using the mouse) is the most strongly correlated with the overall usability of some word-processing functionalities?; (ii) when designing a valid usability questionnaire for the elderly, do we need to adapt standard Likert scales? Both questions are answered after running a two-hour MS Word session at an adult school with five elderly people with experience with computers. The preliminary results point out that difficulties remembering the steps and using the mouse have a strong relationship with the overall usability of the word-processing functionalities evaluated. The responses elicited from elderly people are mostly dependent on the visual arrangement (vertical, horizontal) of standard Likert scales. The elderly draw firmly on everyday scales to answer questionnaires. Nevertheless, Likert and everyday scales differ in significant ways. In everyday scales, the elements tend to be arranged vertically. In addition, top elements are usually regarded as the best or most expensive, interesting, etc. These differences turned out to have a strong impact on questionnaire’s validity and the adaptation strategy to cope effectively with them. Replacing numbers with adjectives is an effective design solution because adjectives seem to be easier to understand than numbers for the elderly.

References

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Sayago S. and Blat J. (2007). AN INITIAL USABILITY EVALUATION OF SOME WORD-PROCESSING FUNCTIONALITIES WITH THE ELDERLY . In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-92-4, pages 328-331. DOI: 10.5220/0002403803280331


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis07,
author={Sergio Sayago and Josep Blat},
title={AN INITIAL USABILITY EVALUATION OF SOME WORD-PROCESSING FUNCTIONALITIES WITH THE ELDERLY},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS,},
year={2007},
pages={328-331},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002403803280331},
isbn={978-972-8865-92-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 5: ICEIS,
TI - AN INITIAL USABILITY EVALUATION OF SOME WORD-PROCESSING FUNCTIONALITIES WITH THE ELDERLY
SN - 978-972-8865-92-4
AU - Sayago S.
AU - Blat J.
PY - 2007
SP - 328
EP - 331
DO - 10.5220/0002403803280331