Beth Meyer

Functional limitations to daily living tasks in the aged: a focus group analysis.

We assessed constraints on daily living of 59 healthy, active adults 65–88 years of age in focus group interviews. Individual comments about specific problems were coded along the dimensions of (a) the locus of the problem (motor, visual, auditory, cognitive, external, or health limitations); (b) the activity involved (e.g., transportation, leisure, housekeeping); (c) whether the problem was attributable to task difficulty or the perception of risk; and (d) response to limitations (perseverance, cessation, compensation, or self-improvement). The data provide information about the types of difficulties encountered in everyday activities as well as the way in which individuals respond to such difficulties. Each comment was also coded in terms of whether it was remediable via training, design changes, or some combination of the two. More than half of the problems that were reported had the potential to be improved in some way, thus providing direction for future research in human factors and aging. Actual or potential applications of this research include identifying problems and difficulties that older adults encounter in daily activities such as transportation and leisure; more specifically, determining the degree to which such problems are potentially remediable by human factors solutions. Applications of this research also include understanding the types of systems, products, and technologies that older adults interact with currently, or are interested in learning to use.

Effects of age and training on World Wide Web navigation strategies

The present study examined the effects of age and type of training on efficiency and preferences in a World Wide Web search activity. Older and younger participants received a hands-on Web navigation tutorial or a verbal description of available navigation tools. Participants then searched a 19-page Web site for the answers to nine questions. Older participants were able to complete most of the nine search tasks, but followed more links and scrolled more pages to find the required information than did younger adults. Factors in this inefficiency were patterns of returning to the home page while searching and revisiting previously viewed pages during a single task. Hands-on training was associated with increased use of the more efficient navigation tools. Older adults, especially those who received hands-on training, were more likely to use the “site map” and “index tabs” than were younger adults. Implications for training and Web site design are discussed.

Design and evaluation of an adaptive icon toolbar

As information systems become increasingly important in many different domains, the potential to adapt them to individual users and their needs also becomes more important. Adaptive user interfaces offer many possible ways to adjust displays and improve procedures for a users individual patterns of work. This paper describes an attempt to design an adaptive user interface in a computer environment familiar to many users. According to one classification of adaptive user interfaces, the adaptive bar described in this paper would be classified as a user-controlled self-adaptation system.At the users convenience, the adaptive bar offers suggestions for adding or removing command icons, based on the frequency and probability of specific commands. It also implements these changes once the user has agreed to them. Beyond the adaptive bar, the general behavior of the whole user interface does not change, thereby allowing the user to maintain a clear general model of the system. This paper describes the decision-making algorithm implemented in the bar. It also describes the bars self-adaptive behavior of displaying the frequency of each icons use through the icons size. Finally, we present some encouraging preliminary results of evaluations by users.

Age group differences in world wide web navigation

In this study, we examined the effects of age and training on efficiency and preferences in a World Wide Web search activity. Older participants were able to complete most of the tasks, but took more steps to find the information than did younger adults. Factors in this inefficiency were patterns of returning to the home page and revisiting pages that had been seen before during a search. Interactive training improved efficiency and altered preferences. We discuss implications for training and design.

An adaptive short list for documents on the World Wide Web

University of Maribor School of Psychology University of MariborSmetanova 17 Georgia Institute of Technology Smetanova 17S1-2000 Maribor, Slovenia Atlanta, GA 30332 USA S1-2000 Maribor, Slovenia+386 62221 112 +1 4048948344 +386 62221 112debevc@uni-mb. si bmeyer@psy.tfe. gatech. edu rajko. svecko@tni-mb. siABSTRACTSince the World Wide Web (WWW) is so popular andgrowing so quickly, users have almost an intinite numberof sites to choose from. Bookmark features in web browsersallow users to easily record the sites that they would like tobe able to view again, without having to repeatedly searchthrough the WWW. However, bookmark lists for activeweb users can grow very long very quickly. Since user-maintained bookmark lists can easily grow long andsomewhat harder to use, it is usefil to have anautomatically maintained shorter list of useful sites.This paper describes an Adaptive Short List of commonlyused sites. This feature, when integrated into web browsingsoftware. would enable users to check the most probablesites quickly. without having to search through everybookmark they’ve ever created. We also present a decisionalgorithm for selecting sites to include in this list. Thegoal of this system is to determine the most appropriatesites to include in the Adaptive Short List. based on usagedata which the system collects and analyzes while the userworks.KeywordsUser interface, adaptive user interface, World Wide Web,intelligent system. user rnodellingINTRODUCTIONAs more and more information becomes available on theWorld Wide Web and as users discover more of thisinformation, the number of web sites to which they theywant ready access also grows. Web browsing software suchas Netscape [4] supports this need by providing a“bookmark feature. allowing users to return directly to

Making technology accessible for older users

Beth Meyer, Sherry E. Mead Wendy A. Rogers Matthias Schneider-Hufschmidt School of Psychology Dept. of Psychology Siemens AG, PN KE TI 3 Georgia Institute of Technology The University of Georgia D-S 1359 Muenchen Atlanta GA 30332-0170 USA Athens, GA 30602-3013 Fed. Rep. of Germany +1404 894 8344 +17065423115 +49-89-722-2 1906 {gt9020a, sm96}@prism.gatech.edu wrogers@uga.cc.uga.edu msch@pn.siemens.de

Senior CHI: how can we make technology "elder-friendly?"

This panel will discuss the needs of older adults in making full use of computers and similar advanced technology. The panelists include representatives from both academic research and industrial organizations; all are experts in the impact of aging on the use of technology. Questions to be addressed by the panel include: What is the most important thing a designer can do to ensure that older adults can use a product? Will there still be issues associated with aging and computer use as the current generation of computer users gets older? Are normal good design methods enough to ensure that a product will work for this population? If not, is it worth the extra effort?

Issues in practical application of an adaptive interface

The authors have been developing a prototype sys[em for installation in an operationat business environment. During the development, a number of issues have been encountered. These include: ● constraints arising from placing prototypes in operational environments . lack of guidelines for selecting types of adaptation ● difficulty determining adaptation criteria ● difficulty obtaining necessary data from users ● lack of guidelines for making information display decisions ● problems in testing ‘real world’ interfaces These issues are not readily solved with more sophisticated adaptation algorithms; rather. they point out the need for CO1Iect ing more information from attempts to bring intelligent interfaces to complex business environments.

Toward an Understanding of Age-Related use of Incidental Consistency

Skill acquisition studies have found that, with extensive practice, performance can become surprisingly specific to “incidental” features of the training environment - that is, features or relationships that need not be processed to perform the task. Furthermore, studies of aging and “incidental learning” have often shown an age-related deficit in recalling non-content features of stimuli. Two studies examined the role of consistent incidental features in extensive training of a skill, first in a visual search skill and then in a logical reasoning skill. In both studies, incidental features that correlated with correct actions (with varying degrees of consistency) were present in training. These features were then removed or changed in transfer conditions. Changes to these features were disruptive, primarily for younger adults. These results indicate that performance after training can become sensitive to consistent incidental information. However, older adults seem to be less sensitive to this information than younger adults. These results are important to consider when providing supplemental environmental support for complex tasks, or when planning changes to a task environment that occur after extensive practice.