Designing for a Generation: Accessible Navigation Tools for Older Adults

10/04/2017
1:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Expo Hall/Career Fair

Objective: Inspiration
Audience Level: All
Session Type: Poster

In the US, 42% of adults aged 65+ owned a smartphone in 2017. Building computing systems for older adults must consider the effects of age, such as decreased motor skills, worsening eyesight, and limited cognitive processing skills. However, designing accessible technologies for this generation is little explored. For instance, mobile maps, a commonplace tool for independent navigation, are often inaccessible to older adults. To address that, we explore multiscale navigation techniques informed by a Bayesian probability function to compensate for limited fine motor skills in panning and zooming touchscreen maps, particularly when overshooting targets or losing visual anchors.

Speaker(s)

, Texas A&M University