Risk Factors in VDT Workstation Systems — A Review of Recent Research

Despite minimal formal human factors design guidelines, synthetic speech displays are used in a growing variety of applications. The credo for good design is %now the user." Designers are now confronted with a population in which the fastest growing segment is older people. Due to the many changes associated with aging, the optimal environments and tools for these people will change over their life span. This paper focuses on the preliminary design of telephone-based information systems while considering the effects aging has on the user population. Section one covers relevant information on the aging user including research findings on human memory, contexts of aging, working memory, and age-related decline in cognitive hnction. Basic menuing conventions borrowed from the computer age and existing research on auditory menu design are covered in section two. A brief discussion with recommendations, industry applications, and a conclusion are then presented.