The Effects of Familiarity Design on the Adoption of Wellness Games by the Elderly

The elderly often struggle when interacting with technologies. This is because the software and hardware components of the technologies are not familiar to the elderly's mental model. This is a lack of empirical studies about how the concept of familiarity can be infused into the design of interactive technology systems to bridge the digital divide preventing today's elderly people from actively engaging with such technologies. In this paper, we investigate the impact of familiarity in design on the adoption of wellness games for the elderly. We propose a familiarity design framework with three familiarity design elements: 1) symbolic familiarity, 2) cultural familiarity, and 3) actionable familiarity. We then conduct a focused group study involving 10 people over 65 years old to experience two wellnesses games - one with familiarity based design considerations and one without. The results shows that familiarity in design improves the perceived satisfaction and adoption likelihood significantly among the elderly users. These results can potentially benefit intelligent interface agent designed to interact with elderly users.

[1]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Intelligent Software Agent Design Tool Using Goal Net Methodology , 2007, 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'07).

[2]  Patrick Langdon,et al.  The effects of prior experience on the use of consumer products , 2007, Universal Access in the Information Society.

[3]  Sher ry Folsom-Meek,et al.  Human Performance , 2020, Nature.

[4]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Agents as intelligent user interfaces for the net generation , 2010, IUI '10.

[5]  Alethea L. Blackler,et al.  Intuitive Interaction with Complex Artefacts: Empirically-Based Research , 2008 .

[6]  Michelene T.H. Chi,et al.  EXPERTISE , 2009, Palliative and Supportive Care.

[7]  John R. Anderson,et al.  The acquisition of robust and flexible cognitive skills. , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[8]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Reputation-Aware Continuous Double Auction , 2014, AAAI.

[9]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Evolutionary organizational search , 2009, AAMAS.

[10]  Phil Turner,et al.  Towards an account of intuitiveness , 2008, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[11]  Vesna Popovic,et al.  Older adults, interface experience and cognitive decline , 2010, OZCHI '10.

[12]  Qiong Wu,et al.  The innovative application of learning companions in virtual singapura , 2013, AAMAS.

[13]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Reputation-aware task allocation for human trustees , 2014, AAMAS.

[14]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  A Reputation Management Approach for Resource Constrained Trustee Agents , 2013, IJCAI.

[15]  Vicki L. Hanson.  Influencing technology adoption by older adults , 2010, Interact. Comput..

[16]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  A simple curious agent to help people be curious , 2011, AAMAS.

[17]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  A reputation-aware decision-making approach for improving the efficiency of crowdsourcing systems , 2013, AAMAS.

[18]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  An agent-based game for the predictive diagnosis of parkinson's disease , 2014, AAMAS.

[19]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  Product familiarity and learning new information , 1984 .

[20]  Bill Ferguson,et al.  Games for Wellness-Impacting the Lives of Employees and the Profits of Employers. , 2012, Games for health journal.

[21]  Patrick Langdon,et al.  Prior experience in the use of domestic product interfaces , 2010, Universal Access in the Information Society.

[22]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  A multi-agent game for studying human decision-making , 2014, AAMAS.

[23]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Challenges and Opportunities for Trust Management in Crowdsourcing , 2012, 2012 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology.

[24]  Patrick Langdon,et al.  Facets of Prior Experience and Their Impact on Product Usability for Older Users , 2010 .

[25]  Pan Li,et al.  A reputation pattern for service oriented computing , 2009, 2009 7th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing (ICICS).

[26]  Phil Turner,et al.  How older people account for their experiences with interactive technology , 2007, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[27]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  An experimental investigation of the interactive effects of interface style, instructions, and task familiarity on user performance , 1996, TCHI.

[28]  F. Gobet,et al.  The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance , 2006 .

[29]  N. Hodges,et al.  On the dynamic information underlying visual anticipation skill , 2008, Perception & psychophysics.

[30]  Xinyu Xing,et al.  Agent-based Fault Detection Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'07).

[31]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  A fuzzy logic based reputation model against unfair ratings , 2013, AAMAS.

[32]  Chunyan Miao,et al.  Trust-based web service selection in virtual communities , 2011, Web Intell. Agent Syst..

[33]  Fabio Pianesi,et al.  Designing a familiar technology for elderly people , 2008 .