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Mobile phones can provide a number of benefits to older people. However, most mobile phone designs and form factors are targeted at younger people and middle-aged adults. To inform the design of mobile phones for seniors, we ran several participatory activities where seniors critiqued current mobile phones, chose important applications, and built their own imagined mobile phone system. We prototyped this system on a real mobile phone and evaluated the seniors' performance through user tests and a real-world deployment. We found that our participants wanted more than simple phone functions, and instead wanted a variety of application areas. While they were able to learn to use the software with little difficulty, hardware design made completing some tasks frustrating or difficult. Based on our experience with our participants, we offer considerations for the community about how to design mobile devices for seniors and how to engage them in participatory activities.
Massimi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.