Mid Sweden University

Svenskarna och   internet (2014) points out that the use of smartphones continues to grow,   despite this only 14 percent of the elderly in the age of 60 or more,   interacts with a smartphone daily. The reason why older people do not use   smartphones are thought to be because the technology is difficult and hard.

The purpose of this   study was to find shortcomings in usability for older people when interacting   with a smartphone as well as what improvements should be made to increase the   usability. To achieve this purpose five older respondents in the age of 60   years or older were observed and interviewed. Furthermore, a separate model   has been created based on previous research to analyze the results.

The analysis   resulted in a revised model with existing shortcomings and pronounced   improvement proposals. The shortcomings found in smartphone user interfaces   are lack of information on how to perform different tasks, which means they   are guessing solutions, another lack is that icons are alike. According to   the study, descriptive texts should be provided to each icon. The   improvements that older people would prefer to increase the usability are   that it should be one gesture to navigate through the phone which is the   dragged gesture, pointed information in a smartphone how they perform their   tasks and icons as well as buttons should be named after performance.   Proposals for future research are to investigate differences between older   novices and older skilled users of smartphones and at what age older people   are getting worse in interacting with smartphones.