Welcome to the video presentation of our paper.
My name is Carolyn Pang and I'll be sharing our work on technology adoption
and learning preferences for older adults.
This project was a research collaboration between McGill University,
the University of British Columbia and Samsung Electronics Canada.
Technology adoption among older adults has increased significantly in recent years.
As a result, there exists new
opportunities to explore learning preferences within this population.
While older adults have increasingly adopted mainstream technologies,
such as smartphones, over the past decade, the adoption of new generation
technologies, such as smartwatches and personal wearables, remains low.
These technologies include, among other things,
health monitoring apps, which may be especially valuable for older adults.
We had two research questions going into our study.
First, what are the adoption priorities and challenges of older adults with
regards to technologies? And, second when it comes to these
technologies, what are older adults learning needs and preferences?
We set out to address these questions by examining older adults' technology
experiences, both as part of their daily routines and
through the lens of their personal health management practices.
Our work offers insights into older adults' evolving perceptions of
technologies, their ongoing learning challenges, and
design opportunities for next generation learning support.
To address our research questions, we conducted a two-phased
study. In the first phase, we used an online questionnaire and semi-structured
interviews to better understand older adults'
current technology routines. In the second phase, we reflected on
prior work and findings from the first phase
to develop a video prototype of a learning system called Help Kiosk 2.0
that we used as a design probe. Our video prototype featured a large 40 inch
touch tabletop surface that older adults could
place their devices on and receive onboarding support that
would be personalized as the user progressed in their learning of the device.
We also included popular learning methods
identified by our participants, including access to the Internet, trial
and error feedback, step-by-step instructions and videos, and
remote support through video chat and screen sharing.
Once our participants had a chance to view the design probe
we followed up with a set of interviews. We asked participants to reflect on the
features of the video prototype and to discuss the learning supports
they felt were most useful. I'll highlight a few of the key findings next.
First, we learned that technology setup and onboarding
continue to be challenging for older adults.
This challenge has been identified in the past and we show that it has not
improved, thus new approaches are needed.
By contrast, learning preferences have shifted such that
older adults are now comfortable with more independent approaches,
like online searches. For example, participant 20 shares her approach for
searching for help with a technology issue.
"I'll Google it. I'll look it up on YouTube. I mean really,
I ask questions. I go all over the place, online looking,
but very often I end up with trial and error."
This finding of independence is different from earlier research findings
with older adults and impact the support the older adults
need. We also found that older adults had mixed views when it came to new
generation technologies, such as smartwatches and wearables.
While some were interested in learning more about them,
many saw them as redundant to smartphones and perceived them as
unnecessary gadgets. Take participant 16, he says, "Again,
I get all that information from my iPhone. There's a distance monitor on it
and it counts the steps as long as you keep the phone in your pocket.
A smartwatch or another wearable would just be too much."
These perceptions of reduced utility and redundancy are important considerations
when it comes to the adoption of technologies by older adults.
We also found that few participants use technologies for health monitoring
due to concerns around cost and wearing additional devices.
They instead relied on traditional tools to manage their personal health, such as
physical calendars. This suggests the need to augment
current technologies rather than providing
general purpose wearables for health monitoring.
Our work identified emerging design opportunities for learning supports for
older adults. For example, older adults found personal
support, both in person and remote, to be helpful.
Through our video prototype, we also saw that older adults valued the integration
of various supports in one area, including easy access to the Internet,
step-by-step instructions, and short video tutorials. These design
opportunities are just a subset of our work that is included in our paper.
We invite you to learn more about our research by downloading our full paper.
Thank you for watching!