FlexInterface: a Framework to Provide Flexible Mobile Phone User Interfaces - Addressing the elderly diversity - ICEIS 2013

FlexInterface: a Framework to Provide
Flexible Mobile Phone User Interfaces
Addressing the elderly diversity
Sibelius Seraphini
Vinícius P. Gonçalves
Vânia P. A. Neris
Jó Ueyama

Outline
 Introduction;
 Key aims;
 Implementation of Flexible Interfaces
for Elderly;
 Evaluation of FlexInterface with
Elderly Users;
 Conclusions and Future Work.
2 / 25

Context
 Increased use of Mobile Devices; (Nilsen, 2011)
 Aging population worldwide;
 893 million elderly people in the world; (UN, 2010)
 Even in the elderly population, there are differences
regarding education, experience with technology,
cognitive and physical abilities.
3 / 25

Problematic
 Mobile phones interface are developed for young
people;
(Wood et al., 2005; Czaja e Lee, 2007; Goebel, 2007)
 Need to investigate solutions for elderly public:
 Taking into account the diversity of interaction skills among the
elderly.
4 / 25

Key Aims
 Provide interfaces that meet the highest number of
elderly users;
 Make an existing solution to adapt to several user
profiles.
5 / 25

Our Approach
 Develop flexible interfaces;
 Flexibility
 Changes on interface elements (color, size, positions, etc);
 Changes in the order of the interaction actions;
 We proposed a framework that supports the
development of flexible tailored interface design.
6 / 25

Implementation of Flexible
Interfaces for Elderly

Android
 The world’s most widely used smartphone
platform (Canalys, 2011);
 Open Source;
 Design for touchscreen mobile devices –
smartphones and tablet computers;
 Independence of Handset Makers.
9 / 25(Android , 2011)

OpenCom
 Developed by Lancaster University;
 CBSD: Component Based Software Development;
 Reset components at Runtime;
 Adapts to the dynamics features of
the execution environment;
 Domain Independence;
 Device Independence;
 Low Overhead.
10 / 25(Ueyama et al., 2009)

FlexInterface
 Supports the development of the design of flexible
interfaces
 Based on the adaptive middleware OpenCom;
 Enables the application fits user
needs during their interaction with
the device;
 Interfaces elements are
components;
 Loaded, instanstied and
destroyed on demand.
11 / 25

The FlexInterface Approach
 FlexInterface Generic Component;
 Two receptacles (required interfaces)
 FlowScreen
 Determine a sequence of screens used in a task for a user profile;
 Example: Record Name -> Record Phone -> Save Contact;
 ProfileChecker
 Select the most suitable user profile based on user’s interaction data;
 Reset the FlexInterface components.
FlexComp
12 / 25

Evaluation of FlexInterface with
Elderly Users

Evaluation with Elderly Users
 Purpose of Evaluation:
 Observe and analyse the
interaction of elderly people
with flexible interfaces for
mobile phones and see if there
was improvement over the
non-flexible interface;
 Elderly from CRAS (Community
Center) - São Carlos/SP;
 Task:
 User should save a contact in
mobile phone address book
and call it following.
Pair Users Age
Education
Level
Cell phone
Usage
D1 1, 2 81, 84
Less than 4
years
Never
D2 3, 4 66, 60
Less than 4
years
Rarely
D3 5, 6 61, 60
More than 12
years
Daily
D4 7, 8 65, 69
Less than 4
years
Rarely
14 / 25

FlexInterface for Elderly Users
 Two different profiles of elderly people
 Low Education profile – Elderly with less than 4 years of education;
 High Education profile – Elderly with more than 4 years of education;
 ElderlyFlex
 Extension of FlexComp
 One new receptacle (IKeyboard)
 IKeyboard
 Enables us to reset the keyboard at runtime
15 / 25

16 / 25

 ElderlyProfileChecker
 Collect data from the user’s interaction
 Sets the most suitable elderly user profile
 One Keyboard and FlowScreen Component for user
profile;
 Default, LowEducation and HighEducation
17 / 25

18 / 25
 Native Contact Application
Android
Contact Application Interface
 Flexible Contact
Application Android

19 / 25
 Default Keyboard Adapted Keyboard
Keyboard Interface

Evaluation with Elderly Users
 Pair 1: “I can see well that button. I loved the green color!”;
 Pair 2 e Pair 4:
 “I’d rather hear the voice than having to type.”;
 “I loved talking to the phone. He talked to me!”;
 “Is this phone for sale?”;
 Pair 3 (Doctorate): “Having the color gray does not affect the task.”.
20 / 25

Conclusions and Future Work
 FlexInterface framework can be used to adapt existing
solutions to meet a broader number of users (For
instance, Native Contact Android in our Evaluation);
 FlexInterface framework improve the usability of a
system (by a low overhead), since make tasks easy to
complete (less time required per task); and improve the
user satisfaction.
23 / 25

Conclusions and Future Work
 Feasibility testing of the FlexInterface on:
 Others devices (tablets and / or notebooks);
 Others domains (webpages and /or desktop applications);
 Others types of Users (children).
 Improve the FlexInterface Model:
 Add specifics components to collect data from the user;
 Add components to adapt the interface based on the emotion
of the user;
24 / 25

Thank You
sibelius@grad.icmc.usp.br
vpg@icmc.usp.br
joueyama@icmc.usp.br
vania@dc.ufscar.br

FlexInterface: a Framework to Provide Flexible Mobile Phone User Interfaces - Addressing the elderly diversity - ICEIS 2013

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