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The Usability of Training Apps for Older Adults – A Heuristic Evaluation

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HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Papers: HCI for Health, Well-being, Universal Access and Healthy Aging (HCII 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13521))

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Abstract

The literature has shown that normal ageing is associated with a decline in sensory, perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities. Physical activities and cognitive training are considered beneficial for maintaining functional abilities and enabling healthy ageing. Recent years have seen an increase of mobile apps for physical and cognitive exercises. However, few studies have investigated the usability of these apps, particularly for older users, to identify in detail the usability challenges older users face when using these apps. In this paper we present a heuristic evaluation of 10 training apps including five for physical training and five for cognitive training. The results show that all the training apps have usability issues. In order to provide apps with high level of usability for older users, apps designers and developers should take into account usability principles and the characteristics and needs of this user group.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oslo Metropolitan University, POB 4, St. Olavsplass, 0130, Oslo, Norway

    Amrat Kaur & Weiqin Chen

Authors
  1. Amrat Kaur
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  2. Weiqin Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Weiqin Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University West Lafayette, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Vincent G. Duffy

  2. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  3. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

  4. Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Margherita Antona

  5. University of Crete and Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Constantine Stephanidis

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Kaur, A., Chen, W. (2022). The Usability of Training Apps for Older Adults – A Heuristic Evaluation. In: Duffy, V.G., Gao, Q., Zhou, J., Antona, M., Stephanidis, C. (eds) HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Papers: HCI for Health, Well-being, Universal Access and Healthy Aging. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13521. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17902-0_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17902-0_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-17901-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-17902-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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