Co-designing a diversity of social media products with and for older people

D.M. Frohlich, C. Lim, A. Ahmed

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding (ISBN)peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Social media products and services have the potential to address issues of social isolation in later life, when social contact often declines. However, issues of accessibility, functionality and control appear to deter the use of existing systems by some parts of the older population. In this paper, we describe a literature review and co-design exploration to understand and address these issues. Using a methodology we call Focusgroup+, we presented new product concepts to both digitally engaged and digitally unengaged groups of older people for critique and re-design. The concepts were based on familiar devices and included a Photo Phone concept for multimedia communication, a TV Talk concept for social TV, and a Twitter Well concept for broadcast text messaging. Findings from the re-design exercise show that groups responded differently to the same concepts based on their existing skills and equipment, and took them in different design directions to accommodate common preferences for meaningful communication with relatively small groups of key contacts. This led to a diversity of both appliances and apps that better reflected the diversity of participants themselves.
Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Title of host publicationACM International Conference Proceeding Series
Pages323-330
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Dec 2016
Event7th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-Exclusion, DSAI 2016; - Vila Real, Portugal
Duration: 1 Dec 20163 Dec 2016

Conference

Conference7th International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-Exclusion, DSAI 2016;
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityVila Real
Period1/12/163/12/16

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