The importance of empowerment goals in elderly-centered interaction design

This paper deals with the problem of empowering elderly people through adequate interactive applications. We describe a user-centered iterative design methodology which is oriented towards empowerment goals. We present the results of a preliminary study that has involved the project work activities performed by groups of computer science students from the course of human-computer interaction. The projects cover different areas of elderly people's life and the adopted approach has provided interesting insight into the empowerment goals which prevail in each area. The results of the study suggest that, especially when dealing with categories of disadvantaged users, empowerment goals are paramount to gain true usability of a given application.