Smart Phone UI Design For Aged People

With the development of economics and technology,the average life span of human beings has been prolonged.In China,aging has become an irreversible trend.With the increase of aged people,they are becoming the main consumer group.However,daily used products designed for elderly are quite limited.Take mobile phone for example,its usage exists a lot inconveniences for elderly people,such as complex operating UI,advanced icon design,which make the operation of mobile phone hard to understand.At one hand,in current aged people mobile phone market,cell-phone design lags far behind,simple function could not meet the full needs.On the other hand,there is limited academic design research for the smart phone design for aged people.As the main media for human-machine interaction,UI design of smart phone could help old people to use it without difficulties.User friendly should be the direction in the future.This paper proposed old people friendly smart phone design,through scenario based design methodology.Basic functions and features of mobile phone were designed to provide convenience in real life scene of old people and icon design highly imitates common objects old people often use.In this way,this smart phone could provide quick and easy understanding for operation to old people.Literature review,case study,research analysis and practice conclusion has been applied in research part of this paper.At the beginning,It proposed three design directions by pointing out the gap between current smart phone design and cognition reality of users based analyses of the psychological and physical characteristics of aged people;Then it stated the basic concept,current trend and six design principles to follow for smart phone UI design;Furthermore,it introduces scenario based UI design concept,development history and future trend.It concluded the characteristics and advantages of scenario based UI design by case study of Xiaomi free desktop and fun-touch scenario theme desktop.Finally,it applied scenario design methodology for aged people friendly smart phone UI design and stated the practice in complete and detailed design process,starting from design planning,target user research,going through information architecture design,visual design,operation design,feedback design,effect design,and scenario editing design.Scenario based UI as a unconventional smart phone interface,can supply to the traditional phone interface effetely.When this scenario based UI face to the old consumer group,it maybe reduce the cognitive gulf,easy to understand and remember,short learning time,so,all this merit can easy to accept.This paper through to research friendly UI design for old people smart phone,it can build a complete and practice design cycle and method,and also this method can promote to other products design for old people,it has some significance and reference value.