Exploring summative depictions of older user experiences learning and adopting new technologies

Abstract

Older users with limited technology prior experience represent an important user group, in part due to their increase in the population in developed countries. The authorship team collectively have decades of research experience as well as significant industrial experience as part of knowledge transfer, conducting user trials and designing for this user group. It can be difficult to effectively communicate the depth of difficulties that older users can experience with new technologies and new technology interfaces, particularly to clients in technology sectors. Technology adoption models explain the factors that are at play in the likelihood of a user adopting and persisting with a particular type of technology, however they do not depict the temporal aspect of this journey. In previous work the user journey experience was simplified to aid comprehension from a design opportunity perspective and elapsed time. From some initial positive feedback from knowledge transfer clients with this simplified learning diagram, this paper proposes a series of depictions using this as a basis for communicating more specific and nuanced older user experiences to corporate stakeholders, principally designers and engineers.