Does a Haptic Mouse Help Older Adults Use the Web?

Abstract

The goal of our study was to learn if providing older adults with tactile feedback would improve their performance on the Web. The study examined the effects on performance of older users completing tasks on a prototype website using both a normal mouse and a mouse that provides haptic, or tactile, feedback. A total of 18 participants with low and high web experience took part in this experiment. These participants varied in age from 55 to 77 years. There was no correlation between age and level of experience with the Web. Performance was measured using task duration and task success. Results indicate an improvement in performance for users with less Web experience using the haptic mouse.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Chadwick-Dias

McNulty

Tullis

(2003) Web Usability and Age: How Design Changes Can Improve Performance. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Universal Usability, November 2003.

Emery

V. K.

Edwards

P. J.

Jacko

J. A.

Moloney

K. P.

Barnard

Kongnakorn

Sainfort

Scott

I. U.

(2003) Toward Achieving Universal Usability For Older Adults Through Multimodal Feedback. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Universal Usability, November 2003.

U.S. Administration on Aging. (2003). Profile of Older Americans. Retrieved January 6, 2004, from http://www.aoa.gov/prof/Statistics/profile/2003/2003profile.pdf.

U.S. Department of Commerce. (2000). Falling Through the Net: Toward Digital Inclusion. Retrieved January 6, 2004, from http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn00/contents00.html.