Senior — Friendly icon design for the mobile phone

Mobile phones are widely used for several purposes by great variety of users from different profiles. Advances in the technology and market competition result additional features to mobile phones. Manufacturers put multiple functions to a single device which could add mental load and complexity to the users. Most of the mobile phone functions are never used. Another problem on the mobile phone menus is the icons designed used to interpret functions. Icons are already proven to be more useful for communicating than words. Many icons on the mobile phone menus are ambiguous which may cause various interaction problems to users. There is even sometimes no icon for some subtasks in several mobile phone models which cause inconsistency. The purpose of this paper is proposing and designing icons for specific mobile phone functions by including the participation of the older users. Desired features of mobile phones by older adults were identified by surveying, and interviewing the test subjects. The tasks were grouped into five categories based on their similarities. They were asked to sketch figures for twenty-four selected tasks including the main categories. The subjects suggested similar sketches for each task. Rough sketches were analyzed and redesigned into computer based icons by professional designers and the research team. Necessary modifications were done by considering the expert ideas. Another group of subjects tested the understandability of the developed icons by matching method, and final icons were proposed. They easily identified the corresponding meanings for the great majority of the proposed icons. The user interfaces layout was then examined and evaluated by the target users. Interfaces were developed as the final design prototype. We found that the participatory icon design process is successful in reducing system complexity and increase usability. We also found that the participatory design process is useful with the elderly. The older adults reported the participatory design process is interesting and believed the resulting designs would be more familiar and friendlier.