Research On Interaction Design Strategy Of Playful Products For Older Adults From The Perspective Of Healthy Aging

Since the end of the last century,the aging of the population has become a worldwide problem.With the decline of fertility and the increase of the human lifespan,many countries are accelerating into the aging society.On one hand,these demographic changes provide an unprecedented opportunity with "third demographic dividend",on the other hand,they also put forward higher requirements for the society’s aging industry and service system.In order to meet this developing opportunity,create economic benefits by expand the business market share of older adults and improve social welfare,since the 1960 s,a series of promotions of healthy aging was proposed,some studies pointed out that specially designed playful products(toys,games)for the older adults can positively promote their well-being and healthy aging,and help them to remain active and healthy lifestyle in their later years.These benefits are not only conducive to their ability to cope with their decrease of physical,psychological,and cognitive with aging,but also to improve their capability of social interaction and technical skills.Older adults cannot use most of the existing playful products which are mainly designed for children or young people.Some researchers pointed out that some interactive elements in normal playful products are difficult for older adults and need to be redesigned to meet their needs.The designers should be aware that a successful design of playful products for older adults is based on their understanding of the physical capabilities and limitations,social relationships,and technical of older adults.These kinds of products are scarce on the market because of the complex design contexts,few designers would like to focus on this special design area.Therefore,this paper aims to allow more designers to design playful products that meet the needs of older adults by researching on interaction design strategies of playful products for older adults.Based on the design idea of balancing the relationships between product requirements(such as the features of function,form and interaction attributes)and user capabilities(capability limitation,social continuity and technology acceptance),a toolkit of interaction design strategies with the function of guiding designers design playful products for older adults was promoted.The toolkit can help the designers familiar with the way of how to help older adults improve their ability of self-adjustment and adaptation to meet their aging decline.This article focuses on the research method of literature analysis,user research,Case analysis,and design practice.By using indexing,interviewing,cluster analysis,focus group,and doubleblind experimental workshop to collect,analyze the research data.Finally,a compensatory and restorative design strategy based on the limitations of older adults’ capabilities,a strategy related to social connectedness and personal autonomy of older adults based on their social continuity,and a novelty and typicality strategy based on older adults’ technology acceptance were proposed.After that,a further persona framework and conceptual design ideas that are inspired by the five interactive elements were improved.At the end of the study,the rationality and usefulness of these design strategies and tools were verified and optimized based on a double-blind experimental workshop and a focus group.In a word,a toolkit that was integrated with design strategies,tools,methods,and ideas related to the interactive design strategies of playful products for older adults was proposed.