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Designing new interfaces for digital interactive television usable by older adults

Published: 01 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The adoption of digital television (DTV), if appropriately designed, could be particularly attractive for older people, who tend to be overlooked when new services and applications are introduced, and remain a marginalized segment of the television broadcasting population. This article explores a range of methodologies and interactive approaches designed to support older people who have difficulties in using current interface models for DTV. Following an extensive requirements-gathering exercise, four different navigational layouts with a simplified remote control were tested and evaluated with older users to assess their ease of use. The results demonstrated the expected difficulties in understanding some of the terminology and interactive concepts utilized in "traditional" DTV design. Aspects of the experimental layouts suggest promising new directions in the development of visualization and navigation metaphors for user-led activities on DTV for older adults.

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Published In

cover image Computers in Entertainment
Computers in Entertainment   Volume 6, Issue 1
Social television and user interaction
January 2008
123 pages
EISSN:1544-3574
DOI:10.1145/1350843
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 May 2008
Accepted: 01 November 2007
Received: 01 April 2007
Published in CIE Volume 6, Issue 1

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Author Tags

  1. digital television
  2. interactive theatre
  3. interface design
  4. older people
  5. participatory design

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