A Conceptual framework for Adaptive User Interfaces for older adults

Nowadays, information and communication technologies (ICT) have become part of our everyday life, enhancing the quality of life and promoting new forms of social interaction. Despite the numerous benefits of ICT, older adults still present low rates of ICT adoption compared to other population segments. The lack of accessible User Interfaces has been identified as a major barrier. Traditional User Interfaces follow a design for all approach, typically ignoring the needs of older adults. Recent research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) proposes adaptive User Interfaces to suit the individual users abilities. Nevertheless, most of the existing approaches perform adaptation based on user profile groups and do not provide personalized adaptation in real-time. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for developing real-time adaptive User Interfaces. The system aims to target most common issues among older adults, i.e.cognitive decline and vision loss. The developed conceptual framework also presents novel strategic techniques to assess cognitive load and vision related issues in an unobtrusive manner for the user.