HCI and the Older Population
A full-day workshop at
British HCI 2005
Napier University, Edinburgh, UK
5 September 2005
A forum for current work on older people and human-computer
interaction (HCI), exploring the relevance of inclusive design and asking
what makes the older population distinct (or not) from the wider population.
News on the special issue
Position papers from the workshop are available to be downloaded.
Some photographs from the day.
A report on the day from one of the Dundee User Panel representatives.
The results of the discussions (summarised)
Coming soon (but obviously not *that* soon): the full proceedings!
Background
The population of the developed world is ageing, and, at the same time,
technology is an increasingly important aspect of our day to day lives.
Researchers have suggested that compared to younger user groups, older people
often have different needs and wants when it comes to technology, requiring
different types of applications and devices. Ageing is also often associated
with changes in sight, hearing, mobility and other abilities, which could
affect an older person’s technology use. In addition, older people often come
from different backgrounds than typical user groups, which may affect their
expertise with, and approach to, items of technology. Yet inclusive design
approaches suggest that designing well for the whole population will mean
designing well for older people. The workshop will provide a forum for research
in the area of older people and HCI, and allow the community to explore
questions relating to good design for older people.
Previous work
This workshop follows on from a successful ones held at HCI 2002 and 2004
(http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~stephen/research/utopia/workshop/), which led to
special issues of the journals Universal Access in the Information Society and
Interacting with Computers.
SUBMISSIONS
Those interested in attending the workshop are asked to submit first an
abstract and then a short position paper (2 pages) on any aspect of HCI and the
older population, including design methods, applications, devices and services.
These will be circulated in advance and published in the workshop proceedings.
Researchers, practitioners and older people are all welcome. If you wish to
attend without publishing a formal paper, please still send us a short
paragraph describing your interest in the workshop and we will get back to you
on the notification date to let you know whether you have a place at the
workshop.
ORGANISERS
Dr Joy Goodman, Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University
of Cambridge. Phone: +44 1223 766958. E-mail: jag76@cam.ac.uk
Dr Anna Dickinson, Applied Computing, University of Dundee, DD3 6JG. Phone: +44
1382 344787. Email: adickinson@computing.dundee.ac.uk
This workshop is supported by the EPSRC project, i~design 2, which seeks to
provide tools to improve quality of life for the wider population.