Comparing elder users’ interaction behavior to the younger: focusing on tap, move and flick tasks on a mobile touchscreen device

Abstract

Objective: This study presents an observation and analysis on behavioral characteristics of old users in comparison to young users in the use of control on display interface. Background: Touch interface which allows users to control directly on display, is conceived as delight and easy way of human-computer interaction. Due to the advantage in stimulus-response ensemble, the old users, who typically experiencing difficulties in interacting with computer, would expected to have better experience in using computing machines. Method: Twenty nine participants who are over 50 years old and 14 participants who are in 20s years old were participated in this study. Three primary tasks in touch interface, which are tap, move, and flick, were delivered by the users. For the tap task, response time and point of touch response were collected and the response bias was calculated for each trial. For the move task, delivery time and the distance of finger movements were recorded for each trial. For the flick task, task completion time and flicking distance were recorded. Results: From the collected behavioral data, temporal and spatial differences between young and old users behavior were analyzed. The older users showed difficulty in completing move task requiring eye-hand coordination.