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A gender stereotype that has some basis in research is that men are more reluctant to ask for directions than women. We wanted to investigate whether this stereotype applies to technology-related contexts, affecting older adults’ abilities to learn new technologies. To explore how help seeking and gender might relate for older adults, we conducted a controlled experiment with 36 individuals (18 men and 18 women), and observed how often they asked for help when learning new applications. We also conducted post- experiment interviews with participants. We found that although most participants stereotyped older men as being reluctant to ask for help in the interview, the difference between men and women was minimal in the experiment. Instead, other factors had a greater effect: older participants took longer to complete tasks and participants with lower technology self-efficacy asked significantly more questions. 

To investigate how older adults perceive ability changes (e.g., sensory, physical, cognitive) and how attitudes toward those changes affect perception and adoption of built-in mobile accessibility features (such as those found on Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets), we conducted an interview study with 14 older adults and six of their family members. Accessibility features were difficult for participants to find and configure, which were issues compounded by a reluctance to use trial-and-error. At 4-6 weeks after the interview, however, some participants had adopted new accessibility features that we had showed them, suggesting a willingness to adopt once features are made visible. The older adults who did already use accessibility features had experienced a disability earlier in life, suggesting that those experiencing progressive ability changes later in life might not be as aware of accessibility features, or might not have the know-how to adapt technologies to their changing needs. Our findings provide support for creating technologies that can detect older adults’ abilities and recommend or enact interface changes to match. 

To understand whether people can identify their optimal touchscreen target sizes, we asked older and younger adults to identify optimal target sizes on a questionnaire and com-pared these chosen sizes to performance on a target acquisi-tion task. We found that older individuals (60+) were better than younger adults at choosing their optimal target sizes. In fact, younger adults underestimated the smallest target size they could accurately touch by almost 6mm. This study sug-gests that older adults may be able to better configure target size settings than younger adults. 

Smartwatches present inherent input difficulties due to the small touchscreen. In a controlled experiment with 14 participants with upper body motor impairments, we compared smartwatch touchscreen input to input on the bezel of the watch, the latter of which should at least theoretically stabilize user input due to its hard edge. Results demonstrate a speed-accuracy tradeoff whereby the touchscreen is faster but the bezel is more accurate.