The Usability of Training Apps for Older Adults – A Heuristic Evaluation

Abstract

The literature has shown that normal ageing is associated with a de-cline in sensory, perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities. Physical activities and cognitive training are considered beneficial for maintaining functional abilities and en-abling healthy ageing. Recent years have seen an increase of mobile apps for physical and cognitive exercises. However, few studies have investigated the usability of these apps, particularly for older users, to identify in detail the usability challenges older us-ers face when using these apps. In this paper we present a heuristic evaluation of 10 training apps including five for physical training and five for cognitive training. The re-sults show that all the training apps have usability issues. In order to provide apps with high level of usability for older users, apps designers and developers should take into account usability principles and the characteristics and needs of this user group.