Older adults’ experience with and barriers to learning new technology: A focus group study
Hongyang Liu PhD, Sharon Joines PhD*
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AbstractBackground: Technology can be defined as any electronic device, digital service, or digital system that has been designed and developed to serve particular functions. Although these technologies can benefit older adults through their everyday activities, older adults have more difficulty than younger individuals in using and learning to use new technology. Moreover, people with different levels of technology experience may have different learning experiences. Experienced users are expected to have a better understanding of new technologies and more efficient ways of learning.
Objective: Therefore, when designing technologies for older adults, it is important to consider the barriers that older adults could encounter, the methods they can use to overcome the barriers, as well as the different needs among older adults with varied technology experiences.
Method: In this study, 40 participants were categorized into four technology experience levels based on their scores in the Technology Experience Profile. A total of eight focus group sessions, two sessions for each technology experience level, five participants in each session, were conducted.
Results: The focus group data provided insights into older adults’ learning experiences by identifying older adults’ attitudes toward learning new technology, learning barriers, learning method preferences, and their initial learning processes. The main findings from the thematic analysis implied that compared with older adults with a higher level of technology experience, older adults with a lower level of technology experience had fewer positive attitudes and more barriers to learning new technology. The learning barriers reported by the experienced participants were mostly associated with their learning method preferences as well as their starting points of the learning process.
Conclusion: Older adults with different levels of technology experience preferred different learning methods and encountered different learning barriers to some extent. When designing for older adults, designers should consider not only the age-related differences, but from the individual user characteristics.Keywords: Learning process, older adults, focus group, technology experience, user experience
Hongyang Liu PhD, Sharon Joines PhD* (2020). Older adults’ experience with and barriers to learning new technology: A focus group study. Gerontechnology, 20(1), 1-17
https://doi.org/10.4017/gt.2020.20.1.409.10