Applicable Designing Smart Phone for Older People; regarding mHealth

Background: Each English abstract must be in Word 2010 or higher file format. An abstract of 250-350 words should be provided to state the reason for the study, the main findings and the conclusions drawn from the observation. Abstract of original articles and brief reports should be structured under the following headings: Background, Objectives, Materials/Patients and Methods, Results and Conclusions. This section should summarize the purpose and the rationale for the study. It should neither review the subject extensively nor should it have data or conclusions of the study. Objectives: Evidence is growing on the benefits of mHealth in general; however, right now, there is not enough. As the field of mHealth grows in sophistication, it will likely be progressively easier to find appropriate “off-the-shelf” solutions. For now, best practices regarding design principles for aging populations are emerging. These can go a long way to guide mHealth application developers. Some examples of best practices for design include: Materials/Patients and Methods: Designs should not assume that all older users are impaired. Growing old does not necessarily result in impairment. In fact, variability in performance may actually increase among older people as they age, meaning that some older people may actually have better performance than some younger people. Results: Designs should accommodate how aging results in changes to one’s senses (how we perceive), cognition (how we think), body (how we react), and social status (what we want). Simple design can go further. Because cognition, or memory, changes with age, mHealth device designs should not require older users to retain information. Thus, the menu layout of an mHealth device should be simple. Older people may become confused and unable to comprehend or remember a complex menu structure provided by an application Focus on the user experience. Older people may need more time to complete certain tasks, so there should be no actual or perceived sense of time urgency. The user may need very explicit indications from the system they have done it correctly and that the desired process is successfully underway Make the user interface as easy as possible. Some complex features could be preloaded by a doctor or a mobile application developer so that older users only have a single “easy” button to press. Basic medical information could be automatically entered for an older user by knowing the individual’s medical needs. Additionally, some smart systems may anticipate user needs through imputing their medical history in relation to the current date and time. For example, an older user could receive a prompt based on knowledge of current medications that states, “You appear to be nearly out of your medicine; shall we reorder?” Conclusion: Successful design is not just about products that are practical or ergonomically functional. The design should allow the user to feel an emotional appeal or connection to the device. For older adult users, that emotional connection is more likely to exist if the mHealth application appears as trustworthy, reliable, and kind.5 In other words, mHealth applications should be designed with “emotional intelligence” for older people.