Ageing consumers make up a large and growing market, which can be served successfully when producers understand and address technology acceptance factors.
On May 23rd, nine young companies presented their innovations for seniors and senior care. Three of them competed for the prizes. The startup ‘Careship’ won and will proceed to the next round in the global contest.
Before people buy and use a product or service, they weigh the costs and risks against the potential benefits. For many seniors, the costs and risks are higher than for younger customers. Therefore, developers need to set the bar for their product’s customer experience very high.
On March 22nd, the Aging2.0 local chapter Berlin organized a workshop about business model development for startups in the areas of aging and senior care.
A survey was conducted by SeniorWise among the readers of the Dutch website ‘Alleszelf.nl’. The results show which functions seniors find important and which kind of support they desire when using digital devices.
In general, when people grow old, the number of social interactions they have decreases, which is called ‘disengagement’. Disengagement can be desired and undesired, which leads to the question whether product designers should enable or prevent it. In this article we will look at two theories on aging and discuss what they mean for the design of interactive products. (The photo of a turtle is a metaphor: the older we get, the more often we tend to ‘hide in our shells’.)
A person’s chronological age, e.g. ‘50’ or ‘65’, is a weak predictor for how the person uses interactive products. If we want to design products that fit to the needs and behavior of seniors, we therefore need to look at aging in a more sophisticated way. In this article we introduce five perspectives on aging and indicate how relevant they are for man-machine interaction.
On January 14th, SeniorWise hosted the Aging2.0 Berlin kick-off. Anna Birk interviewed Bart-Jan van Putten, who founded the local chapter in Berlin together with Sebastian Glende and Carolin Makus.
Mobile personal emergency response systems (mPERS) allow people (often seniors) to call for help from any location where a mobile phone network is available. However, there is no guarantee that people will wear the device and actually be able to call for help in case of an emergency. In this article we will therefore present recommendations for the design of more effective mPERS.
Some aspects of a design are good for almost every user, while other aspects make it better for seniors in particular. This article highlights important aspects and gives examples of trade-offs when designing for seniors versus other user groups.
While working with several companies on their monitoring systems, we learned about the needs of seniors and their caregivers. In this article we will present 15 design guidelines for making such systems more useful and easier to use.
Tablets are becoming ever more popular among seniors to e.g. communicate with their families, surf the web, view photos and play games. For seniors with little computer experience, standard (Android) tablets are hard to use and may not appear to be useful. Fortunately, several companies are working on special software packages for seniors, which can be installed on top of the operating system or used from within a browser.
There are numerous digital photoframe apps on the market. Most of them are not useful for seniors and do not stimulate family, friends and caregivers to keep sharing photos. This article describes 11 guidelines for designing better photoframe experiences.
Smartwatches have the potential to improve the quality of life of seniors. Many of the features that are already available can be useful for seniors. However, more features are needed and some existing features need to be adapted to suit seniors’ needs.
Rather than letting seniors learn to use your system through trial-and-error, you should incorporate the principles of errorless learning. This will help seniors with cognitive impairments to use your system with more confidence and higher success rates.
