PhoneAbility
Older People Engaging with Navigation Technology
Claudine McCreadie
CLAUDINE McCREADIE: Thank you very much. I am speaking on behalf of colleagues at other universities and we are very grateful for the invitation to tell you a bit about the LBS4all project, which Mike Jackson mentioned this morning.
The content of my talk is as follows. I will give a short overview of the research and then I am going to talk about the methodology and findings in terms of the users' experience, since this has been central to how the project has developed.
The research is part of a Government sponsored programme called "People at the Centre of Communications and Information Technology". So the very basis of our funding is to centre the research on the user. It's very much a team effort with researchers in three universities. I am in the Institute of Gerontology at King's College London with Simon Biggs, and there are researchers at City University and York University. The expertise between us covers geographic information science, human computer interaction and our specialty which is gerontology. Our main partners are the RNIB and the Ordnance Survey, who provide us with detailed street-level mapping information.
I am only going to allude to the technology very briefly. I have a little stash of cards here from my colleague, Jonathan Raper, and anybody who is interested in the ins and outs of the technology is welcomed strongly to contact him. I can give you one of his cards.
The technology has two main components that we have heard about all through today; geographical positioning systems and use of a mobile phone. These are integrated in a personal digital assistant and the interface is a web browser. We think that the web browser is the most practical way forward for users in terms of building short-term solutions because it is an interface that is increasingly familiar to users. The technology built on previous work at City University. I will mention that again in a minute. As a gerontologist on the research team, I have been responsible for the aspect of the research that has concerned older people, and that is what I am going to talk about now.
User involvement has taken place at three points in the project. We began with a good number of in-depth interviews. The aims of these interviews, which took place as the first stage of the research during the autumn of 2003, were to assess the amount that people went about on foot outside their home, where they went to and how often they went to particular places. We wanted to find out about their use of maps and computers and mobile phones, and to see what they thought in principle about the whole idea of a navigation device, and the sort of ideas that they might have for it. We placed this in the context of the literature, including large data surveys like the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing and the General Household Survey.
These interviews then informed the first phase of the technical development. The first trial took place in spring 2005, more technical development followed, leading to a second trial six months later. I am talking about research in progress now because the project is still ongoing.
We interviewed 32 people, and this included three married couples. Eight of our ten respondents were over 80 years old, and they were not short of disabilities of different kinds. Most had some long-term health problem like arthritis or a heart condition that they managed successfully with the help of medication.
Severe hearing problems were more common than severe sight problems. 13 of those respondents had severe hearing problems, four were registered blind and three used white canes. Four out of ten of them used a walking aid of one kind or another.
But this did not mean inaction. Most respondents went out daily, and some were very active indeed in terms of walking. But generally speaking, although there were some people who went out for day trips to explore, most people moved around within a familiar local area. If people did go further afield to an unfamiliar location, they commonly used a map. If they did not like maps, then they asked people and they were happy to do so.
We found the use of mobile phones interesting. It was not related to age. Ten respondents had a mobile phone but only three of those used it regularly. The others either did not use it at all, or, more commonly - and this is borne out by larger research - they kept it for emergency use. The most competent users were a man of 82 and a woman of 86. She was extremely competent, as you can see from this quotation.
"I use it mainly for text messages and incoming calls. I am in contact with my family wherever I am, and also my mobile is on me. It's got the diary of, like, go and see Iris. You know, I know how to put it in the archive so I can refer to it. 'What did I say to Elsie?' or 'What did I say I would do?' So in a way I am very well versed, although I thank my son for that because otherwise I wouldn't have bothered."
Among respondents there was a mixed reaction to the idea of using a mobile to help you find your way and to know where places were, and I think these were well exemplified by one couple.
Mr Carr was quite techie. "I would like to be able to press a button, put something in and it will say tell me what is available where and how you can get to a particular place with ease, avoid any sort of obstacles or things like that, and if I wanted to get somewhere and it hasn't got a map, or I haven't got one, I would like to be able to press certain things that say, well it should say where you are and how you get to where you want to get. That would be a good thing."
Mrs Carr: " Speaking for myself, I don't speak for Jo anyway, I don't think I would be bothered with any of this new technology. I won't be going to the world's end or to the moon to wonder where I am. I shall only be plodding still up the Old Kent Road, or whatever, at my age."
But nearly a third of respondents were enthusiastic about the idea of this innovation and thought that the technology might be useful - for someone else if not for themselves. And even among those who were not enthusiastic, there were ideas about what would be useful. Generally people thought that the device would be most useful in an unfamiliar environment.
Many different LBS services were mentioned, but the three that most frequently came up were, firstly - and this was particularly by the men - toilets. People would like to know where toilets are, how near they are to where they are, and the state of them. One blind respondent pointed out how helpful it would be to know which were male and which were female.
Secondly, transport information. People would like to know about the location of bus and train stations, and about bus stops, particularly stops when you are on the bus, and other bus information. I should say, this was biased by the fact that many of our respondents were living in London. Thirdly, places of cultural and historical interest.
Finally, our respondents were marked by the diversity that is increasingly recognised as typical among older people. Chronological age was a poor indicator of their attitudes to and their use of technology, and it was no more than a very blunt indicator of fitness and activity.
This then was the starting point for work on the navigation device. The technology that we are using, in very lay terms, uses a phone with a large screen. It locates you using GPS. It is all based on web pages. It uses Ordnance Survey maps, and there is an audio facility using Dolphin's Pocket HAL, although we have only recently installed this.
Our first trials involved five participants; four of our original interview respondents and one other contact volunteer. Two were in their 70s, three in their 80s, and only the oldest, the 86-year-old, used a walking stick. The other four were fit and walked a lot. Three of the five had hearing aids. The trials took place in an area around the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens in April 2005. The object was to take a walk in that locality and see how the device actually worked for people as a mapping and positioning device.
It gave them a standard Ordnance Survey map of the area available in three different scales. Each participant walked for about 30 to 40 minutes accompanied by at least two researchers, one of whom helped them, as much as they wanted, and the other observed. Participants were keen to try out the technology and, with one exception, were bold in the way they used the stylus. They scrolled the map and they tried out the different icons. However, only two of those five - one of whom was Mrs Haverfield, the enthusiastic mobile phone user - were really positive about the device in that form. The other three felt that it had little advantage over a conventional map. These findings all came as a result of follow-up detailed interviews with me.
Their main concerns related to the level of detail that was available on the map and, most importantly, to the problem of orientation. It was interesting Gary raised this question about the digital compass. The map, like all Ordnance Survey maps, is displayed facing north. This tended to confuse the participants, who spontaneously expected the screen would reflect what they saw around them, and to find the tracking line tracked their progress behind them. You can get the feel of this very well from the following quotation.
"You're sort of walking backwards according to the map (laughs) and I found that confusing. It depends how you look at the machine, but I found it awkward to find the blue line up in front of me on the machine, which indicates that you're walking backwards. According to that you're walking in the opposite direction. I was much happier once I'd re-orientated the machine to be always pointing north. So I was always walking upwards. Not upwards on the machine, but walking away from the blue line, that way."
Do you all see the problem that you actually get when you are using this device? It goes counter-intuitive for many people, even though my colleagues in technology didn't kind of think this way at all, so it was very helpful to them. He and another of the participants turned the device round of their own accord so that the screen tallied with the direction they were walking in, but then, of course, all your print and so on was upside down.
So, overall, that trial was very interesting. It began to give us some pointers to the direction in which the innovation might go. At this point the map was a facsimile of the paper map and could not be changed. Perhaps crucially, at this point, although the participants had information about their location in relation to the map features, they did not have information about the relevant points of interest.
A whole lot more technical work went on in the light of this, and in the second run of trials we doubled the number of participants. We had the original five people come back, and then five to whom the idea was quite new. We had equal numbers of men and women and equal numbers in their 70s and in their 80s. We changed the interface quite dramatically by trying to simplify wherever we could. In general, older people talking about technology like things to be as simple as possible.
We used a completely different map, and that concentrated on very clear lines and sharp colour contrast. We included detail about some key points of interest, for example, toilets location, cafes, historical monuments and buildings in the area. Again, I interviewed everybody in detail after the walk and observed them as they were going round. I noted 18 key messages from these trials, many of them positive.
The three that I want to flag up here now are, firstly, the importance that participants placed on the labelling of key landmarks. In our drive for simplicity, we had gone to the other extreme and removed all writing from the map, but this was a step too far! Participants wanted key landmarks, like the Serpentine Lake, the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial to be labelled.
Secondly, they gave a warm welcome to the points of interest feature. That has led us to think that the commentary on surroundings might be a more important facility than we had hitherto considered, so that there might actually be considerable educational potential in the device, if we use "educational" in the broadest sense. The third lesson we learned is about the diversity of response.
Just to explain to you what the system actually can do now, it can tell you what is around you in terms of points of interest and nearest addresses. You can see the search facility and the results. It shows you where you are on the map and where you have been, and it now allows you to record your own information about a place, so you can take a photo or you can make a note with what we are calling geo-bookmarks.
So, in conclusion, I want to make one point above all - because we can be very much more ageist than we often think we are - which is that positive engagement with new technology has little to do with chronological age. Our respondents were all fascinated by the device they were trying out. They were asked to be as honest and open as possible with their comments, and they obliged.
Here is one comment. "It's an interesting toy, but I wouldn't put it higher than that. I mean, if I go round a National Trust property there's a little map they give you there that's quite adequate, and you can see things at a glance. Whereas on this thing you can't, you can only see what's presented to you at any particular instant. I find it difficult to suggest (improvements) other than just give everyone a map and let them get on with it! (Everyone laughs) If somebody said to me, 'Would you like to pay £50 and buy one of these things, and then you could put in a tape or a disk or whatever for wherever you were, would you do that?' I don't think I would."
But here is somebody who was hugely enthusiastic. "When it's modified, when it's modified, if I could have all the things I've asked for today, I think it would be absolutely wonderful. If it had a proper map on it, with street names… And preferably an audible thing. Oh yes, please, can I have the first one!" (Laughter all round)
I am biased, of course, as a researcher working with older people, but I think that my colleagues would agree that older users can contribute hugely to progress with research of this kind, and that their contribution is likely to benefit a very much wider constituency by the improved design that can result. Thank you very much.
APPLAUSE
JOHN GILL: Do we have any questions?
NEW SPEAKER: Adrian Wyatt, Co-Chair of DANDA. First of all, I would like to thank you for doing the yellow type on the black background, which is far less strain on my eyes and for many other people with these conditions. But could you extend this to include a wider sample, so that you also include elderly dyslexics and dyspraxics. I know, for example, that I have a great deal of difficulty using styluses. Could I suggest that you try and involve De Montfort Neurodiversity Centre and also South Bank Dyslexia Centre, and you could also involve us as well.
CLAUDINE McCREADIE: That's very helpful. When one goes for the funding of these things, one underestimates how much can be done in that way, and that's where the constraint has entered in, but I take the point absolutely. Thank you.
JOHN GILL: Any other questions?
NEW SPEAKER: Coming back to your group you have interviewed, how many of them are regular PC users and how many of them are using the Internet regularly?
CLAUDINE McCREADIE: Not very many. I am sorry, I can't tell you offhand, but probably three of those. It was quite interesting for us that familiarity didn't appear to be absolutely key. There is a factor that I can't quite put my finger on, to do with perhaps outwardness or a readiness to experiment or to be engaged, or to be helpful, that entered into that.
But I do think, for those of you who don't know the gerontology literature, it is an interesting fact that both computer and mobile ownership is more powerfully related to income than it is to age. If we want to include older people in technological developments, we have to look at actually what older people's income is, and not just at other factors. Opportunity is very relevant.
JOHN GILL: Thank you very much, Claudine.
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Last updated: 14.11.2007 © Copyright reserved
