Launcher50+: An Android Launcher for Use by Older Adults

Craig Leamy

, Bilal Ahmad

, Sarah Beecham

, Ita Richardson

1,2,4 b

and Katie Crowley

1,2 c

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Lero – The Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, Ireland

Learnovate Centre, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Ageing Research Centre, Health Research Institute, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Keywords: Usability, Accessibility, Mobile, Launcher, Older Adult, Software Applications, Apps.

Abstract: While software is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, needed, and available, applications developed for use

by older adults do not always take their specific requirements into account. Our thesis is that: implementing

Usability and Accessibility smartphone application requirements which cater for Older Adults’ specific needs

will improve their ability to engage with software. Our prior research developed 44 Recommendations for the

Development of Smartphone Applications for the Ageing Population (ReDEAP). We assessed 5 existing

launchers against relevant ReDEAP recommendations, finding that they had 48-64% compliance. To test the

feasibility of ReDEAP, we implemented a subset of recommendations, developing a new launcher app,

Launcher50+. The recommendations supported the implementation of a simple user interface, addressing a

key concern raised in the wider ReDEAP study. In this paper, we also evaluate other smartphone launcher

applications, assessing the level of ReDEAP recommendation compliance. This identified several

weaknesses, suggesting that catering for the needs of older adults can be improved.

1 INTRODUCTION

The increase in the proportion of older adults (OAs)

(people over 50 years of age) creates new challenges

and opportunities. Smartphone applications (apps)

have the potential to alleviate problems for OAs, for

example, social isolation and healthcare. Research

(Ahmad et al., 2021) by three of this paper’s authors

(BA, SB, IR), developed Usability and Accessibility

guidelines for software development – ReDEAP

(Recommendations for the Development of

Smartphone Applications for the Ageing Population).

Although recent studies suggest that personal

technology has the potential to cope with some of the

challenges related to the ageing population such as

social isolation (Barbosa Neves et al., 2019) and

physical and psychological health (Matthew-Maich et

al., 2016), we identified that most apps for OAs do

not seriously consider these aspects. The rate of

adoption of personal technologies for OAs appears

low despite the potential benefits they intend to

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1584-5447

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5493-2837

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3596-4363

provide (Lee and Coughlan, 2015). Examples of such

technologies include public displays (Lindley, 2012),

websites (Sudore et al., 2014) and apps (Bull et al.,

2017). Since different technologies require a different

set of design requirements, this research focused only

on one form of personal technology, apps, because

they appear to be frequently used by OAs (Berenguer

et al., 2016). Also, they can help OAs by providing

them access to digital services given the portability,

low-cost and controlled nature of many mobile

platforms (Bull et al., 2018).

ReDEAP provides a structured and evaluated

set of recommendations in design pattern format

(Ahmad et al., 2021). In this paper, we assess existing

launcher apps against ReDEAP, and then validate

some ReDEAP recommendations by developing a

mobile launcher, Launcher50+.

1.1 ReDEAP

Recommendations

ReDEAP was developed through uncovering the

needs of OAs and transforming these into a set of

248

Leamy, C., Ahmad, B., Beecham, S., Richardson, I. and Crowley, K.

Launcher50+: An Android Launcher for Use by Older Adults.

DOI: 10.5220/0011622900003414

In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2023) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, pages 248-256

ISBN: 978-989-758-631-6; ISSN: 2184-4305

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

recommendations to support usability and

accessibility for OAs (OA-Recommendation). They

are in design pattern format (Alexander et al., 1977)

which makes them available and actionable for

developers (Ahmad et al., 2021). The key research

question for that study was: “What do developers of

smartphone applications for older adults need to do to

make their applications usable and accessible for their

target population?” Following a literature review on

app development for OAs, surveys, interviews and

observation were conducted with, in total, 235 OAs

who had mixed levels of technical experience. A

proof-of-concept application was developed, and

further data collected based on observation of OAs’

interaction with their smartphones and online forums.

Thematic analysis, descriptive statistics and

inferential statistics were applied to yield an

augmented set of recommendations. The derived

themes and recommendations were evaluated by

conducting inter-rater reliability tests and were

subsequently transformed into design pattern format.

These were augmented by studying the expectations

of technically proficient (tech-savvy) OAs. Thus,

ReDEAP consists of 44 empirically derived and

evaluated set of recommendations. ReDEAP

addresses a problem - namely, that, when designing

apps for this section of the population, industry needs

to take notice of the specific usability and

accessibility needs of OAs.

1.2 Project Summary

The research presented in this paper arises from a

capstone final year project undertaken by author CL

under the supervision of IR. Its’ goal was to

implement ReDEAP recommendations,

demonstrating their practicality for software

engineers. Thus, the developed software should

comply with the needs of OAs. To test the feasibility

of ReDEAP, a mobile launcher was developed –

Launcher50+. Also called a home-screen

replacement, this is an app that temporarily modifies

the software design and features of a phone's

operating system, controlling the home screen, app

drawer, and lock screen of a smartphone. Through

customising the home screen of a device, it provides

users with a graphical user interface through which

they can organize and manage applications and other

items on their phones. Launchers are available in app

stores. Additionally, we evaluated other launcher

apps to assess the level of ReDEAP recommendation

compliance.

Launcher50+ should:

• Be customizable, meaning that the user could, for

example, change the app theme, font size, icon

size;

• Be easily usable by non-tech savvy OAs;

• Make smartphones easier to use.

2 RESEARCH METHODS

2.1 OA-Recommendations

Initially, each OA-recommendation in (Ahmad et al.,

2021) was evaluated as to how they could be

incorporated into Launcher50+. They were divided

into 3 categories (see Table 1) – those that would be

implemented, those that are directly applicable to a

launcher (25 recommendations, 19 which were

implemented in Launcher 50+ - see Appendix 1),

those which could apply to a launcher depending on

the features offered by the launcher (8

recommendations), and those that were not at all

applicable to a mobile app launcher (11

recommendations).

2.2 Review of Existing Applications

We identified that, in App stores, there are many

simplified Android Launchers available, including

some launchers that are marketed for older users. The

“Top 5” simplified launchers, as determined by the

Google Play Store, were reviewed. They are: Big

Launcher (Fig 1), Simple Launcher, Elder Launcher,

BaldPhone and Simple Mode.

Figure 1: Big Launcher (Big Launcher, 2022).

We assessed the “Top 5” launchers by comparing

them to the 33 ReDEAP OA-recommendations which

could apply to a launcher, as shown in Table 1.

To gain further insight into the selected launchers

we examined reviews from the Google Play Store. A

Python script was written to scrape every review

Launcher50+: An Android Launcher for Use by Older Adults

249

which had been written about each of these

applications. This made use of an existing library

called “google_play_scraper”. After scraping all the

reviews, the script was formatted and stored in a

spreadsheet.

Table 1: OA-Recommendation categorization.

Category Description

Recommendations

to be implemented

(25)

These are recommendations

that are directly applicable to a

launcher. They specify

guidelines for things you

would expect to see in a

launcher. For example, “Use

clear text instead of pictorial

stimuli to relay information”

(Ahmad et al.., 2021) would

be applied to app launch icons.

“Wishlist”

features (8)

These are recommendations

that could apply to a launcher

depending on the features

offered by the launcher. For

example, “Allow the older

adults to choose a preferred

theme in the application”

(Ahmad et al.., 2021).

Choosing a theme is not a

necessary feature but could be

added given enough time.

Recommendations

that are not

applicable (11)

These are recommendations

that are not at all applicable to

a launcher. They specify

guidelines that would be

impossible to implement. For

example, “Incorporate a

display without glare or

reflection from the touch

screen” (Ahmad et al.., 2021).

It is impossible for a launcher

to control the type of screen a

user has on their smartphone.

We excluded unhelpful reviews, as some reviews

did not have any real content or yield any usable

information, e.g. “Nice App”. Content Analysis was

then used to analyze these qualitative comments. This

involved reading through the reviews and marking the

review with codes. For example, if a review

complained about the app having a lot of errors, that

review would get code E. The sum of the number of

E’s indicated how frequently errors were complained

about. Typically, the negative reviews were a better

indicator of what features required improvement.

Results from this stage are shown in Table 2.

2.3 Questionnaire

A questionnaire, answered by 10 OAs, 9 of whom

were aged 50-60, and one aged 60-70, was developed

to gain further insight into user experiences and

difficulties faced with the default Android mobile

phone launcher. We used snowballing to identify

participants in this questionnaire. They came from a

variety of different backgrounds, with different

lifestyles, and living in urban and rural areas of

Ireland. Ethical approval was secured to administer

the questionnaire.

Table 2: Content Analysis Results.

Applications

BL SL ELr BP SM

Errors 10 10 3 5 1

Feature

Requests

5 13 4 8 11

Usability 4 11 3 2 2

Dignity 3 0 1 2 0

Total

Reviews

150 150 21 61 68

% of

Reviews

14% 22% 52% 27% 20%

BL: Big Launcher, SL: Simple Launcher, EL: Elder Launcher, BP:

Bald Phone, SM: Simple- Mode

Table 2 outlines the results of the content analysis

results under the following headings:

• Errors: This refers to any review which

mentioned an error e.g. the app crashing;

• Feature Requests: This refers to any review

where the user is asking for something new to be

added to the app;

• Usability: This refers to any review where users

are complaining about the app being difficult to

use or unintuitive;

• Dignity: This refers to any review where users

mention being embarrassed to use the launcher or

being offended by terms such as “elder”;

• Total Reviews: This is the number of evaluated

reviews. Some launchers did not have enough

reviews and hence had lower amounts of

evaluated reviews;

• % of Reviews: This is the percentage of total

reviews that mentioned one of the 4 labels.

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Figure 2: Excerpt from Comparison spreadsheet.

3 ANALYSIS

3.1 Existing Applications

None of the Top 5 launchers adhered totally to

ReDEAP recommendations with some having

complex user interface components or ambiguous

information. For example, Fig 1 is the default home

screen from the top launcher (Big Launcher). There

are no text labels for the icons, which are themselves

not standard, and some menu options are ambiguous.

For example, the functionality of the bottom right

icon was unclear until it was pressed.

Analysing these launchers against Ahmed’s

(2021) recommendations (Fig. 2) shows from 48% to

64% adherence. This is a rather large difference, as

each missed OA-recommendation contributes to a

decrease in either usability or accessibility. To

illustrate this, apart from the sample shown in Fig. 2,

these three OA-recommendations were not evident in

any of the 5 launchers reviewed:

• Use clear text instead of pictorial stimuli to relay

information;

• Give specific and clear instructions and make

help and documentation available in the

application;

• Use small high-speed adjustments for user

vibration feedback to provide easily detected

sensation.

Omitting these OA-recommendations would have

a large impact on the usability of an application.

This analysis provided a good understanding of

what users expect from a launcher like this. From this,

and specific feature requests, a shortlist of potential

features was developed to include in the new

launcher, Launcher50+:

1. Ability to remove default icons/apps on the home

screen

2. Ability to change icons

3. Ability to zoom in on specific sections

4. Have an optional SOS emergency button

5. The SOS emergency button should be regional

6. Allow quick contacts on the home screen

7. Have the option to display weather in Celsius or

FahrenheitChoose between a 12hr or 24hr time

format

8. Have a pill reminder to remind users to take any

medications regularly

9. Change the colours used in the app

10. Change the icon sizes

11. Allow editing to be locked (To prevent

accidentally moving/deleting apps).

Launcher50+ implements 19 of Ahmed’s (2020)

44 recommendations. This was based on the amount

of time available to complete the student project.

3.2 Questionnaire Results

The results of the questionnaire showed that the age

of participants was in the younger band of the “adults

over 50” age range. This uneven sample meant that

we could not draw any general conclusions for all

adults over 50 years old. Furthermore, as the sample

was so small, we cannot say that the results were

conclusive. However, they do give an indication of

user issues.

We found that some of the usability issues

outlined by Ahmed (2020) do not seem applicable to

this younger age range. For example, no respondent

marked reading text or scrolling as difficult. Despite

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251

this, many recommendations were applicable, even to

this age range. These included:

• 40% of respondents noted having issues with

associating an app icon with the app

• 80% of respondents wanted the ability to

customize their phone's home screen

• 50% of respondents liked when their phone gave

haptic feedback.

In addition, the final free-text question allowed

users to type their feedback and some responses

aligned with ReDEAP recommendations and the

findings from analysis of existing launchers. One user

noted they “can struggle to find apps that are not on

the home screen sometimes”. Another said, “My most

commonly used apps are all scattered across multiple

pages of apps. I wish I could put them all together

instead of always scrolling looking for them”.

For future studies, it would be beneficial to survey

more people in an older age range. While hints of the

problems outlined in other launcher reviews and

ReDEAP recommendations are present in this age

range, there is not a widespread difficulty with using

smartphones in this age range.

3.3 Dignity

Analysis of existing apps highlighted an issue that

had not previously been identified when developing

ReDEAP - dignity. Results showed that many people

were embarrassed to use these simplified launchers.

They did not want people to see their phones as the

simplicity felt degrading. This led to people leaving

negative reviews and opting to revert to the default

launcher. However, these reviews only occurred in

the very over-simplified launchers. The two launchers

which had a more modern style had no reviews with

these types of complaints.

A further literature search on the topic was

conducted and it was found that similar problems

have been reported with assistive technologies in

general. People avoid asking for help as they do not

want to reveal their lack of knowledge (Kuerbis,

2017). For some, utilizing such devices is an

embarrassing admission of dependence (Kang, 2010).

The proposed solution to this problem is

“invisibility”. That is, the assistive technologies must

be unobtrusive or invisible to other people.

3.4 Development Platform

Development of Launcher50+ was restricted to the

Android operating system as Apple(iOS) does not

allow for custom launchers, so the user would need to

jailbreak the phone to install the mobile launcher.

Jailbreaking is essentially hacking the phone, which

ruled out iOS.

Two options were available for the Android

platform: to create a custom firmware or to develop a

launcher application. The custom firmware would

give the developer full control of the operating system

and allow for much more flexibility. It would also

make the launcher more reliable and less prone to

error. However, installing this would mean installing

a new operating system on the device. As the

capstone project was aiming to make the phone easier

to use, this complex setup step would be a huge

barrier to the target audience of the app.

The second option was to create a launcher app.

This is a standard Android application that listens for

the event broadcasted when the user presses the home

button. In this case, the app can interrupt and bring

the user to the launcher screen instead of to their

regular home screen. This option comes with a major

advantage - it is installed in the same way as any other

app. The user can simply download it from the

Google Play Store and install it as normal. Thus, it

was decided to develop Launcher50+.

An Android Application is made up of four

components:

• Activities: This is the visual part of the app.

Which is usually made up of different views. In

Launcher50+, this is where the user’s home

screen is displayed.

• Services: These are tasks which run in the

background, regardless of if the app is on-screen

or not. Typically, the user is not aware of these

background services.

• Broadcast Receivers: This receives and reacts

to events that are broadcasted by other apps. In

Launcher50+ the broadcast receiver is listening

for the home button being pressed.

• Content Providers: This is essentially an

interface between the app and any data stored.

This information can be shared with other apps if

allowed. For example, the “Contacts” app allows

any app with proper permissions to read the

user's contacts.

4 PRODUCT

4.1 Core Functionalities

The first core functionality that was implemented was

listening for the event that is broadcasted when the

user presses the home button, at which point

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Figure 3: First Working Version of Launcher50+.

Launcher50+ starts. Another core functionality was

ensuring that the software could find and display all

installed applications. With these two functionalities,

the launcher was already usable as a replacement

launcher. However, as Fig. 3 shows, it was still far

from complete. The next step was designing the

layout of Launcher50+. A wireframe is a plan of what

components will be displayed on each page,

providing a visual understanding of a page early in a

project (Experience UX, 2022).

4.2 Home Screen

The Home Screen (Fig. 4) is the starting point of the

launcher. It displays the time, navigation buttons, and

shortcuts to the user's chosen favourite apps. While

this screen may look simple at first, there are several

subtle details to note here.

A deliberate section of white space was left at the

bottom of the screen. This was done to avoid having

the “All Apps” button at the very bottom of the

display, because newer smartphones, with edge-to-

edge displays, can cause strain reaching to the bottom

of the display. This was based on feedback from the

content analysis and findings from Ahmed (2020)

where he describes adults’ fingers as “dry and husky”.

Another design decision was in the positioning of

the “Change Preferences” button. A common

complaint observed in the analysis of other launcher

reviews was that users would accidentally remove

apps from their home screen. To avoid this, we

positioned the button in a location where it would be

difficult to press unintentionally. In addition, to

follow the OA-recommendation, the button would

need to be plain text instead of the regular ‘cog’ icon

usually used to represent “change preferences”. The

decision to place it as the second button from the top

meant that a user would have to deliberately reach for

it, avoiding accidental selection. It is also far enough

from the top of the display to not be pressed while

swiping down the notification tray. As an additional

precaution, we added a “Are you sure you want to

proceed?” pop up (Fig. 4). We also opted to make the

buttons on the home screen slightly transparent. If the

user selects their own choice of a background image, it

would be difficult to see behind large, coloured

buttons. With this transparency, background images

are visible without impacting the large button usability.

Figure 4: Launcher50+ Homescreen (left) and “Are you

sure?” pop-up (right).

4.3 Font Screen

The Font Screen (Fig. 5) allows the user to select the

launcher font. Viewing a preview of each font option,

the user clicks to select it, and presses “Apply” to

save changes. ReDEAP recommends four fonts: Serif

or Sans Serif, Helvetica, Arial, or Times New Roman

(Ahmad et al.., 2021). Launcher50+ uses Arial as the

default font with an option for Helvetica. It would be

possible to add additional fonts in future versions.

Figure 5: Font Screen and Favourites Screen.

Homescreen of Launcher50 “Are you sure” pop up

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4.4 Favourites Screen

The Favourites Screen (Fig 5) allows users to choose

their favourite apps. The options to remove existing

favourites and add new favourites are both clear and

easy to read. If an app name is too long to fit here, it

is automatically truncated.

4.5 All Apps Screen

The All Apps Screen (Fig. 6) displays all installed

apps in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order was

chosen for consistency instead of having the list

dynamically change order. Each app is pulled from

the phone's package manager. It is then processed to

find the app name, icon, and launch package. The

icons are then resized to be a uniform size.

Figure 6: All Apps Screen.

4.6 Lock Screen

This is a feature that was not developed in the

launcher. Implementing this would have involved

overwriting the default lock screen to apply ReDEAP

OA-recommendations. However, this results in

security issues as no app can be as secure as the

operating system level locking mechanism.

4.7 Testing

Manual testing, primarily carried out during

development, consisted of listing every feature of the

launcher and manually clicking through them to

ensure that they worked as expected. This was done

as features were implemented. While this is not a

foolproof method of testing, it was quick and easy and

worked well for development.

Once a feature was working, an automated test

was written using Android Instrumentation tests and

the Espresso testing library. This allowed for

automatic click-through testing within the launcher.

These automated tests could be re-run every time a

new feature was added to ensure that no existing

features were broken in the process of adding new

features. The final version of the launcher has 8

automated test suites giving coverage of every aspect.

5 CONCLUSION

Older adults have distinguishing characteristics

which need to be considered when developing apps,

as identified in our previous research. In this paper,19

OA-recommendations, taken from ReDEAP, are

implemented and tested when developing

Launcher50+. When looking at feedback from users

of other popular launchers, a new recommendation

which was identified is to ensure that people’s dignity

is maintained. Designers of apps for OAs need to

balance the need for simplicity with that of creating

an interface that could be considered demeaning.

We demonstrated how ReDEAP’s OA-

recommendations can be used to support the

development of OA software. Our future work

includes evaluating Launcher50+. We also intend

developing further apps to demonstrate the

implementation of the remaining 25

recommendations. Through the development of

Launcher50+, we have demonstrated that ReDEAP is

a usable set of recommendations which can be used

successfully by software engineers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported in part by a grant from

Science Foundation Ireland to Lero – the SFI

Research Centre for Software under Grant numbers

13/RC/2094 & 13/RC/2094_P2. The capstone project

is a core requirement for the BSc in Computer

Systems in the Department of CSIS at UL.

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APPENDIX

OA-Recommendations Implemented in Launcher50+

OA-Recommendation How it is implemented

Use clear text instead of pictorial stimuli to relay information.

Most buttons in the application are text-only. When icons are used

for app logos, they are always accompanied by large text.

Make accessible without need for passwords e.g., fingerprints. The app is not password protected.

Allow sufficient white space to ensure a balanced user interface

design.

The amount of information displayed on the screen at any one time

is always low.

Use font type: serif or sans serif, Helvetica, Arial or Times New

Roman in the application.

Arial font is used by default, with the option of Helvetica.

Allow the older adults to choose a preferred theme. The application's theme can be customized by the user.

Avoid animations and marquees (e.g. text moving top to bottom) There are no animations or marquees.

Disable inactive user interface objects.

The only object which can be inactive is the home screen favourite

shortcuts. Empty buttons are not displayed..

Use consistent and explicit step-by-step navigation and user

interface elements in the application.

The user navigates through the user interface by clicking on buttons

with the name of the screen they are trying to visit.

Avoid scrolling in the application or only allow vertical scrolling

for such scenarios.

Vertical scrolling is only used where necessary - on the full apps

list. It is not used between the home screen and all apps screen..

Provide and make sure that the back button behaves predictably

Using the back button always returns to the previous screen. The

default back button sometimes had to be overridden.

Prevent an error rather than have a recovery mechanism for it.

Launcher50+ passed 100% of test cases, and author 1 has been

using it personally without any errors.

Do not have links to dodgy websites in the application, that may

entice older adults to pay for certain things.

Launcher50+ does not contain any links.

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OA-Recommendation How it is implemented

Avoid the advertisements in the application. Launcher50+ does not contain any advertisements.

Use small high-speed adjustments for user vibration feedback to

provide an easily detectable sensation above the threshold.

Every time a button is pressed a small high-speed vibration is

played.

Allow cancellation of a selection made by the user in the

application.

The favourites, font, and theme pages can all be cancelled instead

of applying changes made.

Incorporate fast swiping in the application. Fast swiping is present on the full app list.

Concentrate information mainly in centre of application interface. The user’s favourite apps are in the centre of the screen.

Use simple, clear and consistent terminology and navigation in the

application.

Language is consistent throughout the app, eg: “Apply” is always

used to apply settings. Simple terminology is used,

e.g.“Preferences” instead of “Settings”.

The application shouldn’t break during the execution of

functionality.

Launcher50+ passed 100% of test cases, and author 1 has been

using it personally without any errors.

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