Senior Citizens in Interaction with Mobile Phones : A Flexible Middleware Approach to Support the Diversity

The elderly population grows and it is necessary to develop appropriate technologies to them. Although many elderly afford a mobile phone, several of them only receive calls and do not benefit from other mobile phones’ functions due to interaction problems. The current design of mobile devices applications favor young audience, instead of also considering the elderly different interaction needs. The elderly population has different educational levels, experience with technology, cognitive skills and physical dexterity. This paper presents the designs of user interfaces that are flexible to meet the diverse requirements of elderly when interacting with smartphones. A framework for the design of flexible user interfaces was applied, and interaction requirements were formalized considering syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects. A set of rules defining the design of the system adaptable behavior was specified. A middleware was adopted and customized, and flexible user interfaces to a commercial Android smartphone were developed. The flexible solution was evaluated by elderly users. The results suggest a reduction in the interaction time with the use of flexible user interfaces and an increase in users’ satisfaction.