Older People and ICT: Towards Understanding Real-Life Usability and Experiences Created in Everyday Interactions with Interactive Technologies

This paper reports key findings on an ethnographical study of everyday interactions of older people with ICT. The research questions addressed are what easy or difficult to use means for older people in their daily interactions with ICT and what the relationship between usability and experiences created between older people and ICT is. 388 older people were observed and conversed with while using a wide array of ICT during 3 years. The results reveal that usability is related to independency. When ICT are easy to use, older people are independent users. Independency (dependency) can be identified by the number and type of questions, environmental noise disturbing interactions and required practice to master ICT. Independency leads to experiences that are emotionally fulfilling, supportive of exploration and reassuring. Dependency results in very sad experiences. These results suggest another way of seeing the interactions of older people with ICT, far from traditional individual age-related changes in functional abilities.

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