Using Direct and Indirect Input Devices: Attention Demands and Age-Related Differences

New musical interfaces for older adults in residential care: assessing a user-centred design approach

Purpose:For older adults in aged-care, group music-making can bring numerous physical and psychological benefits, ultimately improving their quality of life. However, personalising music-making to optimise these benefits is often difficult given their diverse ages, experiences, abilities, cognitive and motor skills, and their experience with music technology.Materialsandmethods:In this study, we conducted a 10-week group music-making intervention with twenty participants in an aged-care home, using a prototype digital musical instrument that we iteratively refined by following a user-centred design approach from direct resident feedback. The prototype instrument adopted a novel method for errorless learning in music-making settings, which we also refined, by increasing the difficulty level of the instrument's operation. We also assessed the residents' engagement with the sessions by obtaining feedback from caregivers and facilitators.Results:Results show that residents' enjoyment decreased as the complexity (difficulty) of our errorless learning implementation increased. We also found that resident engagement increased when changes to the prototype digital musical instrument were provided, but not when residents were giving feedback. Results also found that participation over the course of the intervention, and the number of songs played during each session also enhanced engagement.Conclusions: Overall, our results show the intervention was beneficial to residents, although we note some areas of enhancement for further interventions in designing prototype musical instruments for group music-making in aged-care settings. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONOlder adults positively engage with novel music technology, and do so increasingly over subsequent sessions. Repeated sessions may have the potential to enhance longer-term adoption of technologies as well as any rehabilitative effects of the group music-making activity.There is significant potential for residents with different abilities to all make music together, although to maximise the sustainability of the devices, the sessions, and the subsequent rehabilitative benefits, residents must be given the right adaptation for individual interfaces that balances ambition and ability.Rapid DMI prototyping positively enhances engagement among older adults, suggesting that in the case of a custom DMI, an upgrade schedule should be aligned with key rehabilitative milestones. Similarly, in the case of pre-developed digital music systems, resident exposure to new features or functionality should be strategically introduced, so as to maximise engagement for key phases of resident rehabilitation.

COVID-19 and the use of digital technology in mathematics education

Once the COVID-19 crisis is over, will everything" return to normal" or will we instead witness an ongoing boom in online learning? A time of crisis is an opportunity for all education systems to look to the future; there is enormous potential for digital technology in mathematics education, regardless of the impact of COVID-19. In this paper, the researcher focuses on answering two research questions: (1) Is COVID-19 the gateway for digital learning in mathematics education? (2) What type of digital technology is being used in mathematics education during the COVID-19 pandemic? The study also provided a discussion on the implications that such digital technologies could have on research into the field of mathematics education and practice in addition to suggestions for future research directions on this topic. Interviews were chosen as techniques for the purpose of this research, which were undertaken with hundred and twenty mathematics teachers from different secondary schools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The researcher found that 98% of participants believed that COVID-19 is the gateway for digital learning in mathematics education. In addition, 97% claimed that the use of online education by schools had expanded greatly following the coronavirus outbreak. This has resulted in various forms of software being used to facilitate communicate between teachers and students included mobile technologies, touchscreens and pen tablets, digital library and designing learning objects in mathematics education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in mathematics, and computer algebra systems (CAS) such as Mathematical, Maple, MuPAD, MathCAD, Derive and Maxima.

User Experience of Interactive Technologies for People With Dementia: Comparative Observational Study

Background

Serious games (SGs) are used as complementary approaches to stimulate patients with dementia. However, many of the SGs use out-of-the-shelf technologies that may not always be suitable for such populations, as they can lead to negative behaviors, such as anxiety, fatigue, and even cybersickness.

Objective

This study aims to evaluate how patients with dementia interact and accept 5 out-of-the-shelf technologies while completing 10 virtual reality tasks.

Methods

A total of 12 participants diagnosed with dementia (mean age 75.08 [SD 8.07] years, mean Mini-Mental State Examination score 17.33 [SD 5.79], and mean schooling 5.55 [SD 3.30]) at a health care center in Portugal were invited to participate in this study. A within-subject experimental design was used to allow all participants to interact with all technologies, such as HTC VIVE, head-mounted display (HMD), tablet, mouse, augmented reality (AR), leap motion (LM), and a combination of HMD with LM. Participants’ performance was quantified through behavioral and verbal responses, which were captured through video recordings and written notes.

Results

The findings of this study revealed that the user experience using technology was dependent on the patient profile; the patients had a better user experience when they use technologies with direct interaction configuration as opposed to indirect interaction configuration in terms of assistance required (P=.01) and comprehension (P=.01); the participants did not trigger any emotional responses when using any of the technologies; the participants’ performance was task-dependent; the most cost-effective technology was the mouse, whereas the least cost-effective was AR; and all the technologies, except for one (HMD with LM), were not exposed to external hazards.

Conclusions

Most participants were able to perform tasks using out-of-the-shelf technologies. However, there is no perfect technology, as they are not explicitly designed to address the needs and skills of people with dementia. Here, we propose a set of guidelines that aim to help health professionals and engineers maximize user experience when using such technologies for the population with dementia.

Prediction of the use of mobile device interfaces in the progressive aging process with the model of Fitts' law

PURPOSE

As the population ages, so do the potential users of technology, and older adults' behaviors when using mobile device interfaces are becoming increasingly important. A representative model for detecting older adults' behaviors and performance on the use of mobile device interfaces is needed to provide individualized designs. This research aimed to investigate the applicability of the broadly used model of Fitts' law to detect the progressive changes in the use of mobile device interfaces in older adults. The effect of experience with using technology on performance on a Fitts task was also examined.

METHOD

A sample of 135 older adults was recruited to test the application of Fitts' model to the use of technology by older adult users. Each participant was asked to finish tasks at 9 levels of difficulty, from easy to difficult, in a multidirectional tapping task. Analysis of variance was employed to examine the effect of age on performance on the Fitts task, movement time, and the standard deviation of movement time. Stepwise regression was used to investigate how well age and technology use could predict performance on the Fitts task.

RESULT

Performance on the Fitts task was sensitive to the gradual changes in abilities with aging. Rather than the amount of experience in using technology, age was the stronger predictor of older adults' performance on the Fitts task. Additionally, compared with the younger groups, the users above 80 years old demonstrated significantly higher behavioral variation during the use of mobile device interfaces.

CONCLUSION

This research confirmed that Fitts' law is applicable to the evaluation of the effects of aging on the use of mobile device interfaces. Adults above the age of 80 years should be a major focus for special individualized interface design. This finding can inform future designers and researchers in the development of individualized interface designs for older adult users to enhance their user experiences of mobile device technology.

RELEVANCE TO INDUSTRY

Future designers and researchers can apply the finding on Fitts' law in this research to develop user-friendly interface designs for mobile technology for older adults and thereby improve their user experiences to enhance their independence and quality of life through the use of technology.

Touchscreen interfaces in context: A systematic review of research into touchscreens across settings, populations, and implementations

Although many studies have been conducted on the human factors and ergonomics (HFE) of touchscreens, no comprehensive review has summarized the findings of these studies. Based on a schema (three dimensions of understanding critical for successful display selection) presented by Wickens et al. (2004), we identified three dimensions of analysis for touchscreen implementations: touchscreen technology, setting and environment of implementation, and user population. We conducted a systematic review based on the PRISMA protocol (Moher et al., 2009), searching five article databases for relevant quantitative literature on touchscreens. We found that all three dimensions of analysis have a significant effect on the HFE of touchscreens, and that a selection for or against touchscreens must take into consideration the specific context of system interaction in order to maximize safety, performance, and user satisfaction. Our report concludes with a set of specific recommendations for systems designers considering touchscreens as input/output devices, and suggestions for future study into the HFE of touchscreens.

Evaluating change in user error when using ruggedized handheld devices

The increasing number of handheld mobile devices used today and the increasing dependency on them in the workplace makes understanding how users interact with these devices critical. This study seeks to understand how user error changes based on user age as well as input content type on ruggedized handheld devices. Participants completed data entry tasks of word and character input on two different devices, a physical keypad and touchscreen device. The number of errors and types of error, corrected and permanent were collected for each participant. Based on results on the study, touchscreen devices proved to be the optimal ruggedized handheld device to minimize user error.

Testing usability and trainability of indirect touch interaction: perspective for the next generation of air traffic control systems

This study aims to determine whether indirect touch device can be used to interact with graphical objects displayed on another screen in an air traffic control (ATC) context. The introduction of such a device likely requires an adaptation of the sensory-motor system. The operator has to simultaneously perform movements on the horizontal plane while assessing them on the vertical plane. Thirty-six right-handed participants performed movement training with either constant or variable practice and with or without visual feedback of the displacement of their actions. Participants then performed a test phase without visual feedback. Performance improved in both practice conditions, but accuracy was higher with visual feedback. During the test phase, movement time was longer for those who had practiced with feedback, suggesting an element of dependency. However, this 'cost' of feedback did not extend to movement accuracy. Finally, participants who had received variable training performed better in the test phase, but accuracy was still unsatisfactory. We conclude that continuous visual feedback on the stylus position is necessary if tablets are to be introduced in ATC.

Skill acquisition with text-entry interfaces: particularly older users benefit from minimized information-processing demands

Operating information technology challenges older users if it requires executive control, which generally declines with age. Especially for novel and occasional tasks, cognitive demands can be high. We demonstrate how interface design can reduce cognitive demands by studying skill acquisition with the destination entry interfaces of two customary route guidance systems. Young, middle-aged, and older adults performed manual destination entry either with a system operated with multiple buttons in a dialogue encompassing spelling and list selection, or with a system operated by a single rotary encoder, in which an intelligent speller constrained destination entry to a single line of action. Each participant performed 100 training trials. A retention test after at least 10 weeks encompassed 20 trials. The same task was performed faster, more accurately, and produced much less age-related performance differences especially at the beginning of training if interface design reduced demand for executive control, perceptual processing, and motor control.

From Intention to Input: Motor Cognition, Motor Performance, and the Control of Technology

Fundamental knowledge of motor cognition is an important component in a human factors repertoire, and this chapter serves as a guide to the history, theory, and application of motor cognition research.“From intention to input” captures the scope of this chapter in that cognitive theories of motor control, neural control of movement, and the effects of feedback on movement are all discussed. The chapter progresses from an overview and history of motor cognition theories down to the neural basis for movement, then to an application of these theories via the study of specific actions. From there, rooted in the scientist-practitioner paradigm of human factors, the chapter covers applied considerations for designing control tasks and their associated inputs, taking into account individual differences in motor cognition and control and identifying critical issues in designing for input. General, applied guidelines are provided for use with current and future systems that have a motor cognition component.