Fancy Graphics Can Deter Older Users: A Comparison of Two Interfaces for Exploring Healthy Lifestyle Options

With the aim of encouraging younger and older people to explore the health implications of changes to lifestyle (e.g. diet, exercise, smoking), two alternative interfaces having identical functionality were compared, using a within-participant design, to see if a graphical interface resulted in more exploration than interacting with numeric tables. The consequences of lifestyle changes were shown as the risk of two major illnesses, coronary heart disease and stroke. When ‘advising’ hypothetical patients, the amount of lifestyle exploration done by 16 younger adults (mean age 28 years) was similar for the tables and the graphic interface. Using tables, older adults (n = 16, mean age 68 years) explored as much as the younger group but they explored significantly less when using the graphic interface. Both age groups spent less time with the tables but only the older group significantly preferred them. Among the younger group there was no preference consensus but the data suggested sex differences, with younger males tending to prefer the graphic interface. These patterns of data suggest that, in health related decision-making tasks, graphical interfaces can be unsuitable for older people.

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