A comparative study between younger and older users on mobile interface navigation

Abstract

Mobile interface navigation is an important aspect when directly manipulating the mobile technologies, yet the navigation behavior is not well understood at the level of visual presentation of navigation elements and task complexity for users among different age groups. This comparative study utilized an experiment to compare the mobile interface navigation between younger and older user groups, by examining three types of visual presentations and three levels of task complexity. The results showed that there were significant differences between age groups in navigation efficiency, effectiveness and subjective evaluation. In addition, the navigation performance was significantly lower when the task required more information sources to be remembered and integrated, especially for older users. However, no significant effect of visual presentation was reported on the navigation performance and subjective evaluation. Understanding the mobile interface navigation behavior among different age groups will assist in designing appropriate visual presentation of navigation elements and keeping task complexity to an accepted level for targeted user groups.