what some authors have been saying about the
seniors’ need to be aware of what is happening in the
surrounding environment, allowing them to age well
and to be socially included (Everingham et al., 2009;
Silva, Caravau and Campelo, 2017). All the elements
of the sample also agreed that the splash screen
(Figure 1) is an important feature. Besides allowing
time orientation, in a simple and visual way, this
feature also provides updated daily information of
seniors’ interest. The decline in cognitive functions
can indicate the emerging of cognitive impairments,
but the normal cognitive ageing may also entail some
cognitive slow down (Spar and La Rue, 2005).
Concerning this, the splash screen seems to be an
important informative screen.
Regarding the ASGIE categories in which the
platform offers information, one participant referred
that the available ASGIE are enough while, the other
four participants mentioned that they would like to
see contents on other subjects, namely about sports
(n=2) and decoration activities (n=1). These inputs
allowed a better understanding of the relevance that
leisure activities represent in seniors’ daily living but
allowed also to infer that seniors understood the
existence of content specific areas. Although, this
type of information is outside the scope of social and
public services, which are the key information areas
of the project.
Regarding the notification that appears when a
new video is available (Figure 1 and Figure 2), the
following features were analysed with the sample:
perceptibility of the icon size; text readability (font
type and size); perceptibility of which button should
be pressed to start watching the video, considering the
visual hint. Most of the sample considered that all the
elements are perceptible and easy to understand. Only
one person mentioned that the notification’s icon
should be bigger. The voice-over (female gender),
font type and size (Tiresias Screenfont at 55 pts) of
the text presented during the informative videos (Reis
et al., 2017) were perceived with no difficulty by the
five participants. The background images and the low
volume background music present in the video spots
were not considered problematic elements for the
content understanding. These results are expected
since those elements were firstly designed based on
literature guidelines and then discussed and validated
with a group of seniors in a participatory design
process (Reis et al., 2017;). Despite these positive
answers, the voice-over was considered monotonous
by one of the participants. The five participants
classified the time interval between videos as
“acceptable”. The entire sample also considered the
video library (Figure 1) a useful extra feature, with
two participants (40%) using this tool to watch
“unseen videos”, while the other three (60%) to
visualize “seen” and “unseen” video spots. These
results reveal that the easy and fast access to available
content is highly appreciated by +TV4E platform’s
potential end users. Only one participant, denoted
problems in using the remote control, saying that
sometimes it did not reply instantly to the click (e.g.
“Sometimes I tried to change the channel and it would
not work”). After some tests carried out by the
developers, it was noticed that this problem was
related to the internet connection available in the
participant’s house.
When the participants were asked “Have you ever
felt disoriented and/or confused with the operation
system, losing the control over what happened on the
TV?” they replied with two “no” and three “yes”.
Two of the participants who answered positively said
that sometimes the video stops without any reason
and they do not know how to react (“The video and
the image stop several times and I do not know what
to do”). The other person referred that in the
beginning of the field test, had some difficulties in
realizing how the STB remote control works, but by
end of the field test, it became an easy and intuitive
task. All the participants expressed that if the platform
is available without financial costs they will use it.
Furthermore, all the participants had the opportunity
to add observations that are not included in the
questionnaire. Only one person referred that the
minimization process of the notification, which
informs about the availability of new content, is very
fast (defined as 30 seconds after the notification
appears).
5.2 PSSUQ
Results from the PSSUQ showed that the participants
were satisfied with the usability of the +TV4E
platform (see
Table 1).
Table 1: Results of PSSUQ subscores (n=5).
Mean SD
Overall satisfaction
2,24 0,49
System usefulness (SysUse) 2,04 0,59
Information quality
(InfoQual)
2,48 0,37
Interface quality (IntQual)
2,20 0,80
Analysing the results by subscale, the lowest average
was for “System usefulness” and the highest for
“Information quality”. When analysing each question
of PSSUQ, the lowest score was question number 15
“The organization of information on the system
screens was clear” (mean=1,6; SD=0,55) and with the
highest observed is question number 10 “Whenever I
made a mistake using the system, I could recover
easily and quickly” (mean=3,6; SD=1,52). It was
clear that the highest average obtained in question