An aging society is getting more and more, and it makes our recognition of old people change. A old person leaped into the main group of consumption as their way of thinking changes and they have economic power.
About 70% of the Korean uses mobile pho...
An aging society is getting more and more, and it makes our recognition of old people change. A old person leaped into the main group of consumption as their way of thinking changes and they have economic power.
About 70% of the Korean uses mobile phone, and it becomes the necessary of life from a primary schoolchild to old people. The wide use of the machine needs more functions to makes an elder easier, self-helped, and active.
Old people's perceptivity goes dull and their sense gets down as they get older and older. We recognize by seeing more than 80%, so it is so important to check the change of eyesight caused by aging.
I tracked the mobile-phone interface used by old people and analysed what they needs. The purpose of this research is to show a guideline of the interface suitable for the old based on their visual peculiarity and color sensation theory
To pick out the general difficulties which the old have in using mobile-phone, I conducted the first questionnaire survey of old people by the way of F, G, and I in older than 65, and did the second survey of 30 old persons to get quantitative results from the 1st survey.
The problems made from the 2nd survey are as follows.
1. Too many unused functions which are difficult to operate.
2. Complex stages to work the function when they use.
3. Difficulty in seeing because of space limitation of LCD screen.
4. Wrong operations made from lowering of the sense of recognition and distinction of key-pad background color
5. Other problems.
I would like to separate those problems above into three items by the point of function and structure.
1. A story of function.
2. LCD screen.
3. Keypad background color.
I took the 3 items into color theory of the old's features, visual sensation, and color recognition, and made out prototype of a reform measure.
The prototype was used to evaluate a sense of satisfaction in using.
15 of the 30 of the second survey were taken to the satisfaction question.
In third research, the new interface was compared with the present one.
The result came out as below.
◁표 삽입▷(원문을 참조하세요)
The old generally have a poor ability of seeing, hearing, and being physical against the young. What is more, they feel alienated and lose confidence in their own ability.
But If they can use mobile-phone easily and freely, They have easy communication and it can makes them not feel left out in the cold.
We get to know by the surveys that the design of the new interface with theory in satisfying users is much better than it of the present interface.
It was verified that we could improve the problems of the present interface design by a color effect in the factors of the interface.
I expect that the result of this research can be applied to all kinds of electronic goods with LCD panel such as MP3, washer, and microwave-oven, not only mobile-phone.
In the future, we will see the machines of information technology with complex functions and various interactive media. The needs of users will also assume diverse aspects according to the features of media. Under this condition, we need the conception of a general design which doesn't have exception groups. We have to avoid a special solution such as the conception of lifelong design and need the design to be used by anyone easily. I suggest that it be the next subject of research to do color plan by the design that the people at a disadvantage are brought together into main stream by.