As communication technology progressed and cell phone manufacturers, along with telecommunication companies, entered the race for the “best mobile device and service out there” one large group of Earth’s citizens got left behind – the seniors. Soon it became evident that the progress was simply too much to handle and the pace was “not like in old days”. Since then we all spent hours with our parents and grandparents teaching them things we took for granted; key combination to unlock the keyboard, menus and navigation, address book handling etc.
One European company saw this as an opportunity; a market ‘hole’. So they hired one industrial designer to take care of the device and one user interface designer to pave the way for the software and firmware developers.
After initial interviews and field studies with our target group, we started working. The industrial designer produced few mock-up prototypes for the phone and I designed a way to use it. It was a fascinating process just talking with the elderly and watching them use the cell phone and keypad in ways I never would have guessed.
I have based the use of the phone solely on using two buttons: green for “Yes” and red for “No”, for the entire user interface is based on asking simple yes/no questions. To someone who’s never played “20 Questions” this may sound restrictive, but nevertheless this UI enables the user to:
- Make a call
- Answer a call
- Read new and old SMS texts
- Program speed-dial (via remote assistance) and
- Make an emergency call via one button
Use case diagram flows below show some of these functions.
Next, I created an interactive prototype simulator as a test platform.
A real-size phone displayed on a touchscreen helps clear any basic errors in user interface before implementing a prototype for the phone, where the haptic component comes into play as well.
The design was published in volume 5/2006 of ‘i-com’, a journal of interactive and collaborative media.
