Elderly-Oriented Improvement of Mobile Applications Based on Self-Determination Theory

At present, the research on elderly-oriented experience for mobile applications is relatively scattered, and improvements have not been explored to meet the major psychological needs of the elderly. In this study, 15 principles for the design of mobile applications for the elderly in three aspects, i.e., autonomy, competence and relatedness, have been proposed on the basis of self-determination theory, literature review and results obtained from semi-structured interviews. In order to improve an existing mobile application with respect to these three aspects, data were collected from 45 elderly participants. The results revealed that the improved mobile application effectively catered to the basic psychological needs of older users, as compared to the earlier version. Hence, the design principles identified in the study can effectively guide designers in developing elderly-oriented mobile applications to improve the user experience and the wellbeing of older adults.