Developing Mobile Phone for Elderly Users: A Case Study in Surabaya, Indonesia

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1 Developing Mobile Phone for Elderly Users: A Case Study in Surabaya, Indonesia Theresia Pawitra *, Markus Hartono, Handoyo Susanto Industrial Engineering Depatment,University of Surabaya, Indonesia KaliRungkut Surabaya Indonesia * t_pawitra@ubaya.ac.id ABSTRACT:.Since mobile phone becomes more important and necessary in everyday life in Indonesia, the increased complexity causes severe inconvenience to elderly users who are come up as potential consumer group by the progress of the aged society. This paper aims to develop mobile phone with easy and convenient usability for elderly user. One hundred elderly aged years old who uses mobile phone participated in this study. Results shows that elderly users faced difficulties in reading text in screen, changing the voice volume setting, pushing buttons and differentiating function in the mobile phone menu. Based on the survey results, elderly needs can be categorized in 2 factors, such as physical and cognitive. The physical factors in product design are need for vision in screen and buttons, need of hearing, need for manual dexterity in buttons and need for convenient carrying. Whereas, the cognitive factors are need of function restriction and need for simplification of process. Some improvement were made in the proposed design, such as restricting several functions that is often used by the elderly (i.e., phone call with phone book, text message, camera, clock and alarm, and basic setting for ring tone and profile); grouping the menu based on frequently used functions; simplifying steps on frequently used functions; and changing the dimension of the mobile phone. Usability testing and questionnaire were used to evaluate the proposed design. The result shows that by simplifying steps could reduce 27% of previous time accomplished the frequently used functions and increase the elderly users satisfaction by 17%. Keywords: mobile phone, elderly, usability. 1. INTRODUCTION As the age of digital convergence has been progressed, the function of mobile phone has become more and more complex and various. Since mobile phone becomes more important and necessary in everyday life in Indonesia, the increased complexity causes severe inconvenience to elderly users who are come up as potential consumer group by the progress of the aged society. This paper aims to develop mobile phone with easy and convenient usability for elderly user. In order to develop the mobile phone, study for elderly users difficulties and needs in using mobile phone in everyday life should be preceded. A usability evaluation was conducted to uncover the elderly users needs and difficulties in performing function of mobile phone that related to their everyday life. In this study, the concept of usability was defined to include the two aspects: the performance and the image and impression aspects [1]. The performance aspect of usability means how efficient and effective it is for a user to perform a task to achieve some intended goals by using a product. On the other hand, the image and impression aspect is concerned with the sense or feelings about a product, the impression, or the evaluative feelings about the product. 2. RESEARCH PROCESS In order to evaluate the usability, a survey was implemented to 100 elderly people aged years old who potentially use a mobile phone. The questions on survey were included to ask level of usage, way of learning, and major function used. The following table 1 shows the demographic of respondents including gender and age of the mobile phone user. Table 2 and 3 describes the percentage of function usage and problems occurred when elderly using a mobile phone. A scale of one to five was implemented to rate the frequency of problem occurred. One was labeled seldom used and five was frequently used. The usability was evaluated by rating the performance and the image and impression aspects [1]. The performance aspect was evaluated by asking level of importance and level of satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. For the level of importance, 1 was labeled strongly unimportant and 5 was strongly important. The

2 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 2) opinions on image and impression aspects were elicited by asking agree/disagree questions. Similarly, level of satisfaction was also rated on a scale of 1 to 5, whereas 1 was labeled very dissatisfied and 5 was very satisfied. 1 Age 2 Gender Questions 3 Model of the mobile phone 4 Usage/day 5 Way of learning Table 1: Profiles of elderly users Percentage years old years old years old 7 Male 43 Female 57 Nokia 8250, 2112, 2116, 3310, 6020, , 6275, 6230, 6610i, 6630, 2610, 3125, 1315, 2300, 3100, 3155, 6600, 2865, 2300, 2610, 6300, N73, 6275i, 2310, 6680, 6070, 3120, 2600, 6030 Sony Erickson T610, J220i, K310i, 20 K200i, K220i, J120i, K750i, J110i, K510i, J230i, Z610i, K230i Motorola L7, V3,W375, W times times 33 More than 15 times 16 Taught by somebody else 35 Tried by myself 41 Read the manual book 21 Asked other person 1 Read the manual book and asked 1 other person Tried and ask to other person 1 Table 2: Function usage No Function Percentage 1 Make phone calls 100% 2 Send and read text message 78% 3 Send and read multimedia message 15% 4 Take a picture 30% 5 Browsing internet 3% 6 Setting a profile 32% 7 Playing game 32% 8 Listening music 25% 9 Setting alarm 37% After users opinion on usability aspect was elicited via questionnaire, the problems in design of mobile phone were analyzed. This information was used to identify users needs. The user needs was the input for mobile phone design improvement [2]. The improvement, furthermore, was evaluated by conducting usability testing. The testing was conducted to 10 users using focus group method. In this focus group, paper prototype was developed to simulate the proposed design of mobile phone. The following figure shows the research process applied in this study.

3 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 3) Survey for identifying problems and evaluating usability of mobile phone Identify weaknesses of current design Identify users needs Evaluation of the new design by conducting usability testing Design improvement Figure 1. Research process applied in this study 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1. Usability Analysis The users rated perception/recognition as the most important issue in the performance aspect (see Table 3). Similarly, user also found that perception/recognition was the most satisfied issue in performance aspect. This fact means that mobile phone producers have been aware of the importance of perception/recognition issue. Despite the highest scores mentioned earlier, score of satisfaction level of learning/memorization is the lowest. One possible reason for the lowest score is the degradation of learning/memorizing in elderly users [3]. Furthermore, most of elderly users found that error prevention and memorability are the important dimensions in performance aspect. The survey also discovered that informativeness has the highest level of satisfaction. The survey further revealed that users were satisfied with image and impression aspect, as reflected by high percentage of agree response (see Table 4). Color, luxurious, and elegance were the most three important dimensions in image and impression aspects. Furthermore, elderly users felt that mobile phone makes their life easy and convenient. Group Learning/ memorization Perception/ recognition Control/ action Table 3: Level of importance and satisfaction on performance aspect Dimension Mean of satisfaction level Group Mean of Satisfaction level Mean of importance level Informativeness Learnability Memorability Simplicity Explicitness Responsiveness Efficiency Accessibility Efectiveness Flexibility Controlability Multithreading Error prevention Recoverability Grand Mean Group Mean of Importance level

4 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 4) Group Basic Sense Description of Image Evaluative Feeling Table 4: Users opinion on image and impression aspect Dimension Percentage of agree response Shape 71 Colour 92 Balance 64 Lightness 53 Elegance 93 Neatness 62 Rigidity 75 Percentage of agree response/ group Comfort 97 Satisfaction Attractiveness 86 Acceptability 59 Grand mean The survey also discovered that 64% elderly encountered problems in reading text in screen and 67% faced problem in changing the voice volume setting. Forty seven percent (47%) of the user also had problem in pushing buttons and 40% of them couldn t differentiate function in the mobile phone menu. Table 5 describes detailed problem encountered by elderly. Table 5: Problems encountered No Problems Difficulty of reading the menu because the font is too small 11 11% 8 8% 17 17% 42 42% 22 22% 2 Difficulty of reading the display because the window is too small 24 24% 30 30% 16 16% 30 30% 0 0% 3 Difficulty of pushing the button 6 6% 9 9% 38 38% 29 29% 18 18% 4 Difficulty of understanding the menu 9 9% 21 21% 36 36% 28 28% 6 6% 5 Difficulty of setting volume while making a phone call 4 4% 8 8% 22 22% 51 51% 15 15% 6 Difficulty of perceive the icon 1 1% 11 11% 48 48% 30 30% 10 10% 3.2. Elderly Users Need Based on the level of importance and the level of satisfaction result, the weaknesses of the current design were identified. Figure 2 describes plotting data on the importance and the satisfaction level axis. This figure shows that memorability, explicitness, accessibility, and flexibility have high level of importance and low level of satisfaction. It indicates that these dimensions are weaknesses of current mobile phone design. Therefore, improvement of mobile phone design should focus on these dimensions. According to Sung et al. [1], memorability is the degree to which the product is easy to remember. During the interview, elderly mentioned that steps to do a function sometimes too complicated. Flexibility is extent to which the product can accommodate changes to the tasks and environments beyond those first specified. One of the cases of flexibility is that a phone call is coming when the users writing text messaging. Due to this condition, the elderly users seem to respond the call immediately. In fact, the problem occurs since they do not know what should do. 4

5 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 5) Figure 2. Level of importance and Satisfaction Explicitness is the user s perception that the way the product looks and works is clear and accurate. Some phones have the same icons in the navigating menu but the icons have a different function (see Figure 3). This resulted in confusion among elderly. Accessibility is a degree to which a product is easy to approach, enter, and operate. Elderly found that mobile phone has too many functions so it is not easy for them to operate. Some functions may not be used because they do not need it. For example, internet was only used by 3 of 100 users; and MMS was used by 15 out of 100 users. Problems on operating the mobile phone can be caused by design of keypad, display and dimension of the mobile phone. Figure 2. Folders that have same icon but different function Despite the weaknesses; effectiveness, responsiveness and error prevention is the strength of the current mobile phone design. Based on the weaknesses mentioned earlier, users need can be classified. Elderly needs can be categorized in 2 factors, such as physical and cognitive. The physical factors in product design were need for vision in screen and buttons, need of hearing, and need for manual dexterity in buttons. Whereas, the cognitive factors were need of function restriction, need for simplification of process, and need for shallow depth Physical Factors in Product Design Elderly users were having vision difficulties in reading text in the menu and text message especially when the font is small; and when the color contrast between text and background is not obvious. They need a bigger screen with a big font size and obvious color contrast. They also have difficulties in identifying 5

6 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 6) consonant and vowels on the button because the layout so dense on small button; and finding side button s function. They need a bigger button, separating design between number and text part on button and more obvious clue for functions of side button. Many elderly do not know how to set the phone volume while making a phone call. Therefore, they need an obvious and easy operating button for setting the volume. Elderly users frequently push wrong buttons because the buttons are too small and too close. They also could not differentiate between short push and long push on one button. Long push button is used to find side button s function such as number or capital letter. In addition, they were too slow when typing text message. Therefore, they need button with more obvious textual and auditory feedback when pushing buttons or navigating menus. Button with more than one function should not be recommended Cognitive Factors in Product Design Elderly users do not use all function provided in the mobile phone. Many of them use the mobile phone for calling (100%), sending SMS (78%), and setting alarm (67%). On the other hand, internet has the lowest usage, only 3% of elderly used the internet. Therefore, elderly users need restrict functions that they often use. Major problem in the memorability dimension is too many steps to complete one function. Therefore they need a simplified process with least pages, steps and options. They also need frequent menu in shallow depth so that it can be accessed directly Improvement of Mobile Phone Design The improvement of mobile phone design used a barrier free design concept [4]. Barrier free design pursues special solution to remove elderly difficulty. Therefore, some improvement were made in the proposed design, such as restricting several functions that is often used by the elderly (i.e., phone call with phone book, text message, camera, clock and alarm, and basic setting for ring tone and profile); grouping the menu based on frequently used functions; simplifying steps on frequently used functions; and changing the dimension of the mobile phone. Dimension of the mobile phone was design for accommodating elderly anthropometric. The proposed design groups the menu based on frequent used function (see Figure 3). Figure 4 shows design keypad and main menu that is preferable to the elderly users. They prefer 3 (three) information (option, select and exit) other than 2 information (such as select and exit) or information of each icon. This information located below the icons (see Figure 4a). They also prefer keypad that is common used in mobile phone design. This result is to be expected, given the fact that elderly has difficulty to learn a new thing. Phone book SMS Setting Calendar Gallery Short cut before after Figure 3. Grouping main menu based on frequent used function Simplifying steps were conducted on 2 functions, such as phone calls and text message; since these are the frequent functions used by elderly users. Steps in making a phone call usually (1) open the main menu, (2) find phone call, (3) find contact, (4) find name, and (5) find number(s). For the improvement, name and number appear in one page, so it reduces 1 step. Menu for phone call is reduced into name, setting, speed 6

7 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 7) dial, and delete contact; so that it can be accessed directly. Similarly, in creating text message, 1 step is reduced by combining name and number in 1 page and providing the tick mark to choose more than 1 number (see Figure 4c). Menu for text messaging is also reduced into 4 functions, i.e., create, inbox, draft, and delete. AAddrri iiaann Amanda Amanda Lukas Options Select Exit Figure 4a. Main menu Figure 4b. Preferred Keypad Figure 4c. Simplified steps in text messaging The proposed mobile phone design is depicted on Figure 5. The proposed mobile phone color is silver and black, since this are the most favorite color of elderly users. Dimension of the mobile phone accommodate the anthropometric data of elderly. 13 cm 7 cm Figure 5. The Proposed Mobile Phone Design Figure 6. Mock up of the proposed design Usability testing and questionnaire were used to evaluate the proposed design. The usability testing utilized paper prototype for measuring time accomplished the frequently used functions and number of error. The result shows that simplifying steps reduced 27% of previous time accomplished the frequently used functions. A mock up was developed for evaluating the dimension of the mobile phone (see Figure 6). 7

8 Pawitra, Theresia et al./ The 9 th Southeast Asian Ergonomics Society Conference (Page 8) Questionnaire was administered to measure the level of satisfaction of the proposed design. By evaluating the proposed design, the elderly users satisfaction level increases 17%. 4. CONCLUSION The result of this study indicated that elderly users faced difficulty in reading text in screen, changing the voice volume setting, pushing buttons and differentiating function in the mobile phone menu. The study further revealed that memorability, explicitness, accessibility, and flexibility were the weaknesses of performance aspect of current mobile phone. Therefore, some improvements were made in the proposed design, such as restricting several functions that is often used by the elderly (i.e., phone call with phone book, text message, camera, clock and alarm, and basic setting for ring tone and profile); grouping the menu based on frequently used functions; simplifying steps on frequently used functions; and changing the dimension of the mobile phone. Dimension of the mobile phone was designed for accommodating elderly anthropometric. However, this study has a limitation. The limitation involves number and geographic issues of the sample. In this study, 100 elderly users in Surabaya were surveyed. However, behavior of mobile phone users may vary between cities. Future research, therefore, should survey more elderly users in several cities in Indonesia. REFERENCES [1] Sung H, Han; Hwan Yun, Myung; Kwkh, Jiyoung; Sang W, Hong. (2001). Usability of Consumer Electronic Product. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, [2] Ulrich, Karl T., Eppinger, Steven. (2007). Product Design and Development, USA: Prentice-Hall. [3] Kroemer, Karl; Kroemer, H.; Kroemer, Katryn, and Elbert. (2001). Ergonomics: How to Design for Ease and Efficiency, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. [4] Kim, Hyunjeong; Heo, Jeongyun; Shim, Junghwa; Kim, Miyoung; Park,Soojung; Park, Sanghyun. (2007). Contextual Research on Elderly Users Needs for Developing Universal Design Mobile Phone. In Book C. Stephanidis (Ed.), Universal Access in HCI, Part I (pp ). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. 8