Title :
Exploring user spiritual experience with Islamic websites for elderly
Author :
Abdul Razak, Fariza Hanis ; Haminudin, Nor Rasyidah ; Wan Adnan, Wan Adilah ; Abd Rahman, NurIzzati ; Abdul Rahman, Hani Fuziah
Author_Institution :
Fac. of Comput. & Math. Sci., Univ. Teknol. MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam, Malaysia
Abstract :
Studies of the elderly have shown that the elderly may turn to spirituality and religion when they meet difficult life changing events and experience personal losses. Therefore, instilling hope, offering support and therapeutic interventions such as prayer, thought, morality, artistic expression or professional referrals through the means of ICT technology such as religious Web sites may lead to spiritual rejuvenation and healing. Internet has become a primary source of information about Islam for its Muslim followers and other people from different religious beliefs. There are thousands of Islamic Web sites on the Internet, however, majority of them were found low in user satisfaction. One of the reasons was because they failed to provide necessary spiritual experience to the users. Thus, this study was undertaken to explore user spiritual experience with the Islamic Web sites. We employed a user study with seven older participants to help us understand their spiritual experiences. We asked their experiences with two chosen Islamic Web sites and their own favourite Web sites. From the study, we learnt that user spiritual experience is very much affected by Islamic spiritual interfaces, trusted contents and the Web site usability.
Keywords :
Web sites; assisted living; graphical user interfaces; human computer interaction; humanities; ICT technology; Islamic Web sites; Islamic spiritual interfaces; Muslim followers; Web site usability; artistic expression; elderly people; information source; morality; prayers; professional referrals; religious Web sites; religious beliefs; spiritual experience; spiritual healing; spiritual rejuvenation; thoughts; trusted contents; user satisfaction; user spiritual experience; Decision support systems; Islamic interfaces; Islamic spiritual; Islamic websites; Muslim elderly; spiritual experience; spiritual usability;
Conference_Titel :
Information and Communication Technology for The Muslim World (ICT4M), 2014 The 5th International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Kuching
DOI :
10.1109/ICT4M.2014.7020670