Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Tangible Interaction on Tabletops for Elderly People

2011; Springer Science+Business Media; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-642-24500-8_61

1611-3349

Tiago Manuel Alves Pereira Marques, Francisco Nunes, Paula Alexandra Silva, Rui Rodrigues,

Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

The urge to improve the life of older adults grows as this segment of society expands. Computers have an enormous potential to benefit the lives of older adults, however, the unawareness or disregard of their characteristics, renders technology, many times, impossible to use. Peripherals are a common obstacle when learning to operate computers, because the most common ones do not directly map the input in the user interface. It has been argued that touch- and gesture-based user interfaces, due to their direct mapping of input, can reduce the obstacles that older adults face, when using the computer. To assess this, this paper presents a project that uses a multi-touch tabletop system as a gaming platform for older adults. Specifically, it reports on the low-fidelity prototype that was built to test whether tangible objects can be used. Conclusions regarding the viability of tangible objects for that purpose are also drawn.