What is it about?
Designers of apps make use of usability techniques in order to scientifically assess the usability of the software. However, such techniques rely on good short-term memory and are therefore not suitable to assess usability for key populations such as people living with dementia. We assess these techniques in a study of people living with dementia and their caregivers.
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Why is it important?
It's important the we design apps appropriately and inclusively for the audience of uses, whether for people with learning disabilities, cognitive impairments, or dementia, otherwise we are excluding a large proportion of the user population. This makes neither business nor design sense. This research highlights the issues and points the way forward for more research on usability techniques that are ethical by design.
Perspectives
As more and more apps seek to offer some form of cognitive enhancement to, for example, people living with dementia, we realised that current usability metrics were not suited for these people. Interestingly, this research is widely applicable for use by people with cognitive disabilities and diseases.
Prof Maurice D Mulvenna
University of Ulster
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Assessing usability testing for people living with dementia, January 2016, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3051488.3051492.
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