Moses – Method for Selecting Senior Mobile Phones: Supporting Design & Choice for the Elderly

Abstract

The current focus on the development of mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies presents new and exciting challenges for the evaluation of interactive products. Despite a vast and growing literature on mobile phone requirements for the elderly there are no customisable design guidelines to support and inform designers and especially, the people who buy and sell mobile phones for the elderly. This paper presents a method for using a customisable, prioritised checklist to guide phone and feature selection, specifically for older adults. To identify and isolate the items for this list, we collected data relating to the needs of elderly mobile phone users by interviewing 147 elderly mobile phone users. The data was analysed and the findings used to construct the checklist. Building on and extending previous research involving guidelines and checklists, this paper adds value by proposing a prioritized checklist to inform the selection and design of mobile phones. The mechanism prioritises features, attaching a weight to each, to support quantification of the suitability of a particular phone for a specific person. The same mechanism can be used by interface designers who have to select an optimal set of features. The paper should be of interest to mobile phone users, designers, practitioners and researchers in the field of mobile Human-Computer interaction.