Fat Finger Worries:

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Fat Finger Worries How Older and Younger Users
Physically Interact with PDAS Katie A. Siek, Kay
H. Connelly, and Yvonne Rogers ksiek, connelly,
yrogers_at_indiana.edu Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana
Project Overview There has been steady growth in
the global population of elderly people,
challenging researchers in the HCI community to
design technologies to help older people remain
independent and preserve their quality of life.
Some researchers have created assistive
technology solutions using Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs). Critics question whether older
people can use PDAs because of age related
difficulties with computers 2. This poster
presents an initial usability study that shows
there are no major differences in performance
between older and younger people physically
interacting with PDAs and completing traditional
and non-traditional PDA tasks.
Experiment Design

• Findings
• There were no differences in success rates
  between older and younger participants for the
  button press and voice recording task.
• Younger participants preferred smaller icons (5mm
  or 10mm), whereas older participants preferred
  larger icons (20mm).
• Older participants scanned objects more with both
  scanners, but had the same success rate
  (obtaining a valid UPC number with the scanner)
  as younger participants.

Hardware Selection

• Evaluated PDAs
• Evaluated Scanners

Create a task list

• Future Work
• Increase the number of participants in our study
• Add cognitive tasks (application walk-through)
• Recruit volunteers from outside of the University
  and from public assisted living facilities
• Have participants stand or walk during tasks 4
• Create applications to assist integrating
  information appliances (e.g.. PDAs) into older
  peoples everyday life

Design applications
Motivation

• Button Press Task (Fat Finger Task)
• metric incorrect button presses
• Icon Size Task
• metric preferred and smallest readable icon size
• Recording 3 Varying Length Voice Diaries
• metric success rate
• Scanning 3 items with two scanners
• metric success rate

• Elderly populations are growing around the world
• By 2055 30 of the working population will be
  supporting 71 of the world population 3

• References
• Carmien, S., Gorman, A. Creating distributed
  support systems to enhance the quality of life
  for people with cognitive disabilities. In
  UbiHealth 2003. (2003)
• Czaja, S.J. Computer technology and the older
  adult. In Helander, M., Landauer, T., Prabhu, P.,
  eds. Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction. 2nd
  edition edn. Elsevier Science, B.V. (1997)
  797812
• Demographic Projections. World Bank Group, 2003.
• Hall, A., Cunningham, J., Roache, R., Cox, J.
  Factors affecting performance using touchentry
  systems tactual recognition fields and systems
  accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology 73 (1988)
  711720
• Helal, S., Giraldo, C., Kaddoura, Y., Lee, C.
  Smart phone based cognitive assistant. In
  UbiHealth 2003. (2003)
• Laursen, B., Jensen, B., Ratkevicius, A.
  Performance and muscle activity during computer
  mouse tasks in young and elderly adults. European
  Journal of Applied Physiology 25 (2001) 167183

Usability Study

• People want to remain independent and preserve
  quality of life
• Researchers are creating assistive technologies
  to help elderly live productive lives 1,5

• Twenty participants
• Control Group Ten 25-30 years old
• Experimental Group Ten 75-85 years old
• Participants were novice PDA users and had
  similar computer experience
• No time constraints 6
• Attempted each task once

Research Question Can elderly people use PDAS?
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Fat Finger Worries How Older and Younger Users
Physically Interact with PDAS Katie A. Moor, Kay
H. Connelly, and Yvonne Rogers ksiek, connelly,
yrogers_at_indiana.edu Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana
Title and Author Project Overview
Motivation
Title and Author Project Overview
Motivation
Method
Method
Results
Future Work
Results
Future Work