How to Help Older Adults Move the Focus on a Smart TV? Exploring the Effects of Arrow Hints and Element Size Consistency

ABSTRACT The current interfaces of smart TVs (STVs) lack an effective customization that is consistent with the needs of older adults. Accordingly, this study investigates the usability problems encountered by older adults when using STVs, and it identifies solutions to the most frequent problem. In the pilot study, a usability test was conducted and the difficulty of focus manipulation was found to be the most frequent one. Then in the main study, an experiment was conducted to evaluate two solutions (i.e., maintaining consistent element size and adding arrow hints), which involved remote control (RC) and touchscreen interaction (TI) input methods. Fifty-three older adults were recruited to participate in the study and thus four findings were found. First, the task completion time for manipulating focus increases with age and it rapidly increases after 75 years of age. Second, using a simplified RC can significantly improve the task effectiveness and decrease the number of keystrokes and the completion time for manipulating focus when compared with TI. While when using TI, after adding arrow hints to the STV interface the task completion time and the number of keystrokes are reduced. Third, for both input methods, when the interface comprises elements with inconsistent sizes, adding arrow hints was observed to enhance the task effectiveness and shorten the task completion time. However, the arrow hints were counterproductive when the element sizes were consistent. Fourth, the majority of elderly participants preferred to use arrow hints in the STV interface.

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