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Providing adaptive smartphone interfaces targeted at elderly people: an approach that takes into account diversity among the elderly

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Abstract

The growth of the elderly population in many countries makes it necessary to develop appropriate technologies for them. These include mobile phones, as they are increasingly becoming cheaper and more widespread. Furthermore, many families would like their elderly relatives to use this technology as a means of fostering digital inclusion. However, the current designs for mobile devices software are aimed at a young audience, rather than taking account of the different needs of the elderly. The elderly population can be characterized by their wide diversity which can be attributed to decades of varied experiences. Moreover, this is heightened by sharp differences in acquired education levels, use of technology at work, cognitive skills and physical dexterity. The authors believe that this diversity is even more striking in developing countries, such as Brazil, since in these countries a huge economic gap still exists between different elderly people. This paper seeks to investigate: (1) What can be done to solve the problem of enabling the elderly to use smartphone interfaces and (2) how one should develop adaptive smartphone interfaces that can be targeted to the elderly. With this in mind, this paper shows how a prototyped platform was implemented and evaluated. It is worth stressing that real-life experiments with Brazilian elderly people were carried out. The results suggested that there had been a reduction in the interaction time as well as a significant increase in user satisfaction.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their colleagues at LaSDPC-USP, LIFeS-UFSCar, LInCE-UFSCar and CR-AS-Santa Felícia, for their valuable support and comments. The authors are especially grateful to the elderly participants of the experiments. Finally, the authors would like to thank the CNPq (4748-03/2009-0) and FAPESP (2008/05346-4, 2012/22550-0, 2014/19076-0) research funding agencies for their financial support. Jó Ueyama would like to thank the Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) for funding part of his research project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science (ICMC), University of São Paulo (USP), Av. Trabalhador São-carlense, 400 - Centro, São Carlos, SP, 13566-590, Brazil

    Vinícius P. Gonçalves, Sibelius Seraphini & Jó Ueyama

  2. Department of Computing, Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Rodovia Washington Luís, km 235 - SP-310, São Carlos, SP, 13565-905, Brazil

    Vânia P. de Almeida Neris

  3. Department of Statistic, Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Rodovia Washington Luís, km 235 - SP-310, São Carlos, SP, 13565-905, Brazil

    Teresa C. M. Dias

  4. Institute of Exact and Natural Sciences, Federal University of Pará (UFPA), Rua Augusto Corrêa, 1 - Guamá, Belém, PA, 66075-110, Brazil

    Gustavo Pessin

  5. Department of Computer Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, Az, 85721, USA

    Thienne Johnson

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  1. Vinícius P. Gonçalves
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Gonçalves, V.P., de Almeida Neris, V.P., Seraphini, S. et al. Providing adaptive smartphone interfaces targeted at elderly people: an approach that takes into account diversity among the elderly. Univ Access Inf Soc 16, 129–149 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-015-0429-9

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