Elderly-centered usability heuristics for augmented reality design and development

Abstract

AbstractAugmented reality (AR) technology is making rapid progress and gaining high popularity, substantially due to the variety of new possibilities that it can offer to its users, including the elderly population. However, there is a lack of guidelines, recommendations, and testing techniques to make AR effective, efficient, and satisfying for its potential users. Usability heuristics are an effective tool that can help to ensure the usability of AR systems and can be used as a guide for the design and development process as well as a checklist for usability testing. However, general well-known usability heuristics do not consider specific aspects of AR, such as hardware limitations, privacy and safety issues, comfort of use, and the high importance of the user’s environment. General heuristics also do not always consider different user groups such as the elderly and people with disabilities. In this study, we developed a set of usability heuristics for AR systems for elderly users. The development process was inspired by the eight-step methodology by Quiñones et al. (Comput Stand Interfaces 59:109–129, 2018) and consisted of two main stages: gathering the heuristics from previous publications through an integrative literature review, and content analysis and validation of the collected heuristics through expert judgment (interviews with AR experts with industrial and academic backgrounds). The proposed final set of usability heuristics consists of six categories with a total of 55 heuristics that can be used by AR designers, developers, and usability testers to ensure the usability of AR systems for elderly users.