Research On Information Technological Life Design For The Elderly People

The life environment includes space environment, infrastructure environment andtechnology environment. Our life quality is greatly affected by the quality of the lifeenvironment around us.Among the enormous technologies which consist the technology environment,information technology (IT) is one of the most representative and most powerful onesaffecting our life deeply and widely. It has become an inseperable part of our life. Thewidely application of Information Communication Technology—ICT products is changingpeople’s life style, bringing great conveniences to our work and study, becoming one ofthe most prominent features of modern information society.But the rapid development of IT does not give the elderly people equal opportunitieswith other age groups. The elders are rejected by the information society in some ways. Theresearches including our investigation say that quite a lot elders have to stay in thetraditional ways when they learn information and communicate with others. They are leftbehind by the information society and technology life further and further. When agingsociety has become more and more serious, technology has the potential to improve theindependence and quality of life for the older people by providing more access toinformation and services, increased opportunities for social interaction, recreation, andeducation. Now more and more countries are researching on building information servicesystem for the elderly people based on IT, it means that accepting and using IT productswill become ‘have to’, thus not only a way of enriching their life. But if IT or ICTproducts can not be popularized among the elderly group, it means they can not enjoy thebenefits such as more safety and high efficiency brought by the technology development,which also gives negative affection to people’s self evaluation and make them think theycould not follow the society’s development, thus affect to improve their technology lifequality and life quality together.Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its derived theory, throughinvestigation and research, this paper tried to explore the elements which affect the elderly people to accept and use ICT products bith from the angles of user and product design, andestablished the Technology Acceptance Model for Seniors (TAMS). The paper saysPerceived Usefulness, Percieved Ease of Use, Supporting Conditions and Social affectionare the key elements which affect the elderly people’s Attitude of Use and BehaviourIntention. In additional, the user’s ergonomic features and experience compatiability haveimportant affection on Perceived Usefulness and Percieved Ease of Use. TAMS enrichedthe research scope of TAM and usability research for the elderly people at the same time.During the process, the paper give literature review on the ergonomic researchachievements for the elderly group from the fields including human factors, cognitivepsychology, developmental psychology, gerontological psychology etc.. It is clear thatalthough the intelligence level of the elderly group declines with ageing generally, it doesnot mean all the aspects decline. When the fluid intelligence including perceptual speed andworking memory decline significantly, the crystal intelligence including experience,knowledge and verbal ability could maintain stable, or even grow in some certain degree.The opions that overall declination will appear with ageing is not right.When analyzing the user features, this paper also tried to discuss the social features ofthe group---the times they growed up give the elderly group some marked imprint, such asthe intergeneration difference in educational resource owned, the explosion development ofIT and ICT, the health situation and the life environment etc. all have their affection onlearning ability and knowledge structure of the group. The analysis enriched the userresearch further about the elderly group.The last part of the peper proposed the design stategy based on the research above. Itemphasizes that it is very important for the designers to know both the declining ability andstable aspects simultaneously, but not only emphasize the declining ones. In the ICTproducts design for the elderly people, we’d better try to use the stable ability, avoid orreduce placing the burden on the declineing abilities, so that we could improve thePerceived Usefulness, Percieved Ease of Use, and thus help and encourage the seniors toaccept and use IT products.When we design and develop IT products for the elderly people, we still have a lot ofwork to do for improving our design. The paper combinates the research achievements cross various fields basing on the TAM theory platform, discusses the factors which affectthe technology acceptance of the elderly people, their human factors characteristics anddesign strategy and measure accordingly, providing references for further design research inIT products for aged people. I hope the research could enlarge the research content andenrich research ways in design research field.