Performance Evaluation on Simplified Computer for the Elderly People

Simplified computers become more important than ever before in our modern life. However, this new-form computer actually has many ergonomic problems according to previous user experiences. As the coming era of the elderly, the elderly people have many chances to use simplified computers. It is also why many related ergonomic studies have been the trends of current research focuses. In this study, we use the usability engineering methods to study the design principle of simplified computers. The experimental equipment includes ACER Iconia Tab, and ASUS Eee transform-Pad, and experimental software includes Game software, Social networking software, Chinese short article and Web site browser, together with the combination of both subjective interface usability attitude inventory and objective inventory survey to enhance our research results. Our conclusions are that elderly people have poor performance in operating social networking software, Chinese type-in and browsing the worldwide web site, because of their less usage experiences. Next, when Elderly people are using transform-Pad, they have better performance on game software than on social networking software, Chinese type-in and browsing the website.