The effects of PDA pen-length on the performance of older adults

User interface design such as hand-held devices (e.g, PDAs) is a flourishing research area. Although there have been a lot of studies on the usability of pen-input interfaces on PDAs, not much study has been reported regarding physical aspects such as the stylus pen use with handheld devices. This study focuses on the pen-length to improve the usability of PDAs. Our previous study (X. Ren et al., 2004) showed that a pen-length of about 11 cm contributed to the most efficient PDA performance. However, all subjects were young people (university students). The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of PDA pen-length on the performance of older users and to perform subjective evaluations of older people using a PDA.