Teaching Older Adults to Use Gerontechnology Applications Through Instruction Videos: Human-Element Considerations

This paper aims to investigate the effect of human narrator (vis-a-vis an artificially-created cartoon narrator) in designing instruction videos to teach older adults to use gerontechnology applications. Additionally, we assess whether there is a difference if the human narrator is a child, a young adult, or an older adult. A sample of 124 older adults was collected to test the research hypotheses. Our findings suggest that in general instruction videos with human narrators are preferred by the older adults over the one without (i.e., cartoon character). More interestingly, the older adults prefer child as the human narrator (to young adult and older adult), as reflected in the highest perceived effectiveness and social presence of the video garnered among all the video versions. These insights have important implications on teaching and promoting older adults’ use of gerontechnology applications via instruction videos. We conclude this paper with a discussion on the research implications, limitations and future research.