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Cited by 37Technology Use by Older AdultsUsability and User Interface DesignDigital Accessibility for Disabilities

Synapse: Interactive Guidance by Demonstration with Trial-and-Error Support for Older Adults to Use Smartphone Apps

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Jin, Xiaofu, Hu, Xiaozhu, Wei, Xiaoying, Fan, Mingming·2022·Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
DOI 10.1145/3550321
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Abstract

As smartphones are widely adopted, mobile applications (apps) are emerging to provide critical services such as food delivery and telemedicine. While bring convenience to everyday life, this trend may create barriers for older adults who tend to be less tech-savvy than young people. In-person or screen sharing support is helpful but limited by the help-givers' availability. Video tutorials can be useful but require users to switch contexts between watching the tutorial and performing the corresponding actions in the app, which is cumbersome to do on a mobile phone. Although interactive tutorials have been shown to be promising, none was designed for older adults. Furthermore, the trial-and-error approach has been shown to be beneficial for older adults, but they often lack support to use the approach. Inspired by both interactive tutorials and trial-and-error approach, we designed an app-independent mobile service, Synapse, for help-givers to create a multimodal interactive tutorial on a smartphone and for help-receivers (e.g., older adults) to receive interactive guidance with trial-and-error support when they work on the same task. We conducted a user study with 18 older adults who were 60 and over. Our quantitative and qualitative results show that Synapse provided better support than the traditional video approach and enabled participants to feel more confident and motivated. Lastly, we present further design considerations to better support older adults with trial-and-error on smartphones.

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  • There is a need for both tightly-coupled and loosely-coupled support for older users.

    “Studies show that there is a need for both these types of support for older users: tightly- [25] and loosely-coupled [45,69] with the optimal interaction path.”

    From "Where is history": Toward Designing a Voice Assistant to help Older Adults locate Interface Features quickly (2023) · cites this paper as [25]

    The introduction (p. 3) describes support that lets older adults depart from a demonstrated interaction path, then helps them recover. The description of Basic and Trial-and-Error modes (p. 1) also shows both step-by-step guidance and freer exploration. This supports the need for different degrees of guidance, but our copy does not establish that the demonstrated path is optimal. (LLM, conf=0.82)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Jin, X., Hu, X., Wei, X., & Fan, M.
Affiliations
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HK)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Published
2022-09-06
Volume
6
Issue
3
Pages
1-24
ISSN
2474-9567 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1145/3550321
OpenAlex
W4294891731
Cited by
37
References
6
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1
FWCI
11.26
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)
Locations
  • Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive Mobile Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • Rare & Special e-Zone (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Technology Use by Older Adults
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
  • Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
Keywords
older adults, mobile app usability, interactive tutorials, trial-and-error learning, multimodal guidance, help-giving, user confidence, user motivation, synapses

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