Introduction to the special issue on “Design for Aging”

All unhappy users are alike; each happy user is happy in his / her own way.^1[1] Unhappy users often cannot enjoy the blessings of modern technology but must live with their drawbacks. Even though they have access to new technology, they often face difficulty because it was not designed to suit their needs and capabilities.

For many older adults, new technology, especially more complex Information and Communication Technology (ICT) cannot keep their promise. For them, ICT design often neglects fundamental usability aspects, while focusing on creating fantastic user experiences. Yet the consequences are hard to quantify: Older users often cannot compensate for the design deficits and the use of potentially useful if not essential ICT becomes a source of frustration, if not unattainable for them. Imagine for yourself – a day without the many blessings of modern technology, imagine a day without a smart phone, without a laptop. How would this day progress? Very different? Faced with abundance, abstinence might even sound tempting (consider a “media fast” or “digital detox”), but how long would you enjoy it before averting starvation?

In a time when the aging population and ubiquitous computing have become global trends, we cannot afford to exclude an increasing number of people by design, for ethical and financial reasons. Thus, the goal of Universal Usability [3, 4] that has already become an imperative for ICT in public access systems, now has gained importance in all areas of life. Reaching this goal seems very challenging and calls for the best in research and design. Fortunately there is already a large body of tried and tested knowledge, methods and design principles available to work towards that goal and the question arises whether these suffice or should be extended to a more specific human centered design (HCD, [2]) approach for aging that could for now be called HCD+.

HCD+ could build on HCD principles and focus on age specific changes in user characteristics over the life span, trying to incorporate them into a research based design approach that appreciates older adults as users and designers. Many scientists and designers have already embraced this challenge – among them are the authors in this special issue on “design for aging”.

The article Design for Elderly – A Meeting Point for Ethnography and Usability by Cordula Endter describes applications and advantages of ethnographic methods (e. g. cultural probes, perceptual walking techniques, mental mapping, diary techniques, participant observation) in usability engineering and design for aging. It argues that the design challenges in fields such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) require an interdisciplinary approach and integrating ethnography broadens the spectrum of methods to provide insight into social practices that can help to derive needs and requirements for assistive technology, addressing issues such as insecurity and personalization, speaking the user’s language and focusing on actual user needs instead of new technological possibilities (need driven development).

The article Smart Home Medical Technologies: Users’ Requirements for Conditional Acceptance by Simon Himmel and Martina Ziefle focuses on AAL from the users’ perspective, specifically on their acceptance of three AAL integrated monitoring technologies with increasing intrusiveness (positioning, microphone, camera) in five domestic spaces with increasing privacy demands (home office, kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom) and the influence of user characteristics (age, gender, health status, attitude towards technology). It reports results from a longitudinal questionnaire study (2010, N = 100 & 2015, N = 115) to assess these acceptance factors and their interactions and to derive general requirements for AAL acceptance.

The article Towards Acceptance Engineering in ICT for Older Adults by Anna Kötteritzsch, Kathrin Gerling and Martin Stein focuses on acceptance and motivation as central aspects of older adults’ ICT use, calling for their integration into the human centered design process. It describes twelve lessons learned from the authors’ experience in diverse research projects, e. g. on cognitive training and movement-based games for older adults, as well as on ICT assistance systems for public transportation and speech language therapy.

The article Development and evaluation of video instructions for a cross-generational AAL tablet application by Roman Benz, Martin Brucks and Michael Sengpiel argues for the early integration of instruction design into the human centered design process, improving universal usability of the product by eliciting insights for the user interface design process, enhancing perspective taking for the design team and reducing additional instruction design efforts. Ten short video instruction lessons were designed and usability tested with 61 younger and older users in an AAL research project (SMILEY), following a modular approach to integrate diverse assistance applications into one central UI to provide useful and usable assistance suitable for diverse users.

The article Acceptance and Usage of an Online-Based Cognitive Group Training for Older Adults by Marten Haesner, Anika Steinert, Julie O’Sullivan and Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen aims to investigate acceptance of video based online training for older users and to identify usability barriers. It describes a pilot study embedded in a field test with 40 older adults, who took part in eight weeks of individual online cognitive training. 20 of these participants (mean age = 70) also joined an online-based cognitive group training (OCGT) with four 20–30 minute long modules (1. repeating information, 2. structuring information, 3. connecting logical information with pictures and meanings, 4. practice the learned strategies), embedded in the training platform LeVer (“Learning against Forgetting”) comprising four categories: (1) general settings, (2) communication functions (messaging and video call), (3) cognitive training and (4) information section on healthy aging, nutrition and cognition.

The article Best practices for designing electronic healthcare devices and services for the elderly by Matthias Wille, Sabine Theis, Peter Rasche, Christina Bröhl, Christopher Schlick and Alexander Mertens focuses on telemedicine systems and services, highlighting best-practice examples from their own research and deriving best practice guidelines. The research overview includes (a) qualitative interviews to assess information needs and behavior, (b) a laboratory study investigating interactions on touchscreens (c) a field study investigating acceptance and use of fitness trackers and (d) a longitudinal study investigating the influence of demographic factors like age, gender, educational background and individual medical history on the acceptance of a medication adherence tool.

These articles focusing on ICT interaction and experience of older users can only provide a glimpse into a growing field that considers age relevant user characteristics in the Human Centered Design (HCD) process for ICT. To activate the necessary momentum in research and development for universally usable products and services, it is important to address usability problems for large populations and to avoid the delusion that time itself will heal them – Instead, it requires hard work and intensive interdisciplinary cooperation.

While usability testing with older adults will keep its importance as litmus test of good usability, HCD+ could develop from designing for older adults to designing with older adults and finally to design for “aging” as a process that starts with birth rather than surprises us on our 65^th birthday. Such an approach already has a solid base in life span research [1] and could make great progress towards the goal of universally usable ICT design that can make users of all ages and ability levels be happy users.

We would like to thanks all authors and reviewers that contributed to this special issue.