"Smiles, kids, happy songs!": How to collect metaphors with older adults
Résumé
In the context of an ageing society, vibrotactile wearable devices can open up new avenues for assisting older adults in their daily lives. They can provide information and yet free the hands, ears and eyes, which can be crucial to safety. However, designing intuitive informational vibrotactile messages for and with the older adults has seldom been investigated. This paper describes an initial study involving older adults in the design of vibrotactile messages for a pedestrian navigation application. The design is based on metaphors or everyday analogies in an attempt to strengthen the link between the pattern and its associated meaning. The study presents the method to collect these metaphors, focusing on the difficulties encountered with such an 'abstract' task and the steps taken to adapt it to the audience. As a result, a number of metaphors were collected, in line with what matters for older adults (e.g. kids, health).