Technology design focused on the characteristics of the population provides usability
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Guidance
To improve usability design of the technology should be developed specifically on the characteristics of the person with dementia, with respect to vision, auditory and cognitive capacities.
Explanation and Examples
Dementia is mainly suffered by elderly people. It´s well known the visual and auditorily perception changes. Shapes, colours, glares, temporal frequency of stimuli, visual acuity, and relevant visual stimuli can be bad perceived. Therefore, the design of any technology should be focused and fitted to these perceptual changes. Consequently, it is important to increase the lighting of the context of the task, the level of contrast and font size.
Equally elderly people might suffer impaired hearing, especially in sensitivity to high frequencies, discrimination of tones and differentiation of the speech of the background noise. Therefore, it is necessary for any technology to increase the intensity of the stimuli, control the background noise, avoid stimuli with high frequencies and adapt the speed of the words.
The design of the technology should take into account the cognitive impairment of a person with dementia (type, level, and deficits associated with impairment). Technology for rehabilitation must comprise different difficulty levels, take slow processing speed into account by extending response intervals of exercises, and an increase the variety in types of exercises.
The degree of usability of a technology will influence the user´s experience, generating a degree of satisfaction in the person with dementia that will affect their level of motivation to continue using a rehabilitation program such as Gradior.
Themes
Cognitive impairment Degree of satisfaction Motivation Usability User Experience (UX) Visual-auditory abilities
Target groups
People living with dementia Researchers Technology developersType of evidence
Angie Alejandra Diaz Baquero (INDUCT ESR15)
RCT
RCT Gradior Validation
References
Toribio Guzmán, J. M., Franco Martin, M.A., Perea Bartolomé, M.V. (2015). Long Lasting Memories, an integrated ICT platform against age-related cognitive decline: usability study. (Doctoral), Department of basic psychology, psychobiology and methodology of behavioral sciences – Faculty of psychology. University of Salamanca, Spain.