Age-related differences in performance with touchscreens compared to traditional mouse input
Abstract
Despite the apparent popularity of touchscreens for older adults, little is known about the psychomotor performance of these devices. We compared performance between older adults and younger adults on four desktop and touchscreen tasks: pointing, dragging, crossing and steering. On the touchscreen, we also examined pinch-to-zoom. Our results show that while older adults were significantly slower than younger adults in general, the touchscreen reduced this performance gap relative to the desktop and mouse. Indeed, the touchscreen resulted in a significant movement time reduction of 35% over the mouse for older adults, compared to only 16% for younger adults. Error rates also decreased.
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In Findlater et al. (2013), 9 of 20 older adults used touch-screen devices on a daily basis and 3 had never used such devices.
“For instance, in Findlater et al. (2013), 9 of 20 older adults used touch-screen devices on a daily basis and 3 had never used such devices; in Piper et al. (2010), 17 out of 20 older adults used computer daily, but in Leonardi et al. (2010) only 2 of 15 older participants had some computer experience and the others had none.”
From Intuitive Learnability of Touch Gestures for Technology-Naive Older Adults (2015) · cites this paper as Findlater et al., 2013
Some work suggested that touch-screens might be beneficial for older adults.
“Some work suggested that touch-screens might be beneficial for older adults (Lee et al., 2009;Findlater et al., 2013;Schneider et al., 2008), who could complete a range of touch gestures including point, drag and pinch (Kobayashi et al., 2011).”
From Intuitive Learnability of Touch Gestures for Technology-Naive Older Adults (2015) · cites this paper as Findlater et al., 2013
Cites
Touch a Screen or Turn a Knob: Choosing the Best Device for the Job
Rogers, W. A., Fisk, A. D., McLaughlin, A. C., & Pak, R. (2005) · Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society · doi:10.1518/0018720054679452 · Cited by 141 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Rogers et al. [13] found that older adults were slower than younger adults for pointing and sliding (scrolling) tasks on a touchscreen, and that small button sizes were particularly problematic for the older adults.”
BackgroundUse of Computer Input Devices by Older Adults
Wood, E., Willoughby, T., Rushing, A., Bechtel, L., & Gilbert, J. (2005) · Journal of Applied Gerontology · doi:10.1177/0733464805278378 · Cited by 118 · see citing works
An exploratory study of a touch-based gestural interface for elderly
Leonardi, C., Albertini, A., Pianesi, F., & Zancanaro, M. (2010) · Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries · doi:10.1145/1868914.1869045 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
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Ageing and human-system errors in manufacturing: a scoping review
Di Pasquale, V., Miranda, S., & Neumann, W. P. (2020) · International Journal of Production Research · doi:10.1080/00207543.2020.1773561 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Analyzing visually impaired people’s touch gestures on smartphones
Buzzi, M. C., Buzzi, M., Leporini, B., & Trujillo, A. (2017) · Multimedia Tools and Applications · doi:10.1007/s11042-016-3594-9 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Interface adaptation to novice older adults’ mental models through concrete metaphors
Zhou, J., Chourasia, A., & Vanderheiden, G. (2017) · International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction · doi:10.1080/10447318.2016.1265827 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
“Maps are hard for me”: Identifying How Older Adults Struggle with Mobile Maps
Yu, J. E., & Chattopadhyay, D. (2020) · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3373625.3416997 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Intuitive Learnability of Touch Gestures for Technology-Naive Older Adults
Mihajlov, M., Law, E. L.-C., & Springett, M. (2015) · Interacting with Computers · doi:10.1093/iwc/iwu044 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Mack, K., McDonnell, E., Jain, D., Lu Wang, L., E. Froehlich, J., & Findlater, L. (2021) · Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3411764.3445412 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Self-citationJoh, H., Lee, Y. J., & Oh, U. (2022) · Proceedings of the 19th International Web for All Conference · doi:10.1145/3493612.3520454 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E., Fattal, K., Wobbrock, J. O., & Dastyar, T.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2013-04-27
- Pages
- 343-346
- OpenAlex
- W2145036787
- Cited by
- 172
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 5
- FWCI
- 55.82
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Technology Use by Older Adults
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Interactive and Immersive Displays
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Keywords
- touch screen, older adults, age differences, psychomotor performance, mouse input, pointing, dragging, crossing, steering, movement time, error rate, human-computer interaction
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