Design and Assessment of User Interface Optimized for Elderly People. A Case Study of Actgo-Gate Platform Artur Rot, Robert Kutera and Wieslawa Gryncewicz Department of Information Systems, Wroclaw University of Economics, Komandorska 118/120, 53-345 Wroclaw, Poland {artur.rot, robert.kutera, wieslawa.gryncewicz}@ue.wroc.pl Keywords: User Experience, Elderly People, Human-computer Interaction, GUI, Web-based Applications. Abstract: In much of the world, particularly the developed world, there’s a growing aging population. Our work focuses on user experience and its impact on user interface design of web-based applications for elderly people. The paper presents the set of aging-centered user interface design guidelines. An initial collection of guidelines was first developed through an extensive review of the human-computer interaction and aging- oriented literature and through applying a series of classification methods. Then the Authors proposed an assessment framework, which could be used as an universal tool to evaluate the web-based system according the user interfaces dedicated for elderly people. The detailed guidelines were grouped into 7 categories which were granted with appropriate importance weights. In the next section ActGo-Gate platform was presented as a web-based application dedicated for activating and supporting elderly people. Finally, the user interface of the system was evaluated according the proposed criteria. 1 INTRODUCTION The population in nowadays societies is older than ever, and it is expected to get even older (Rocznik, 2015). Today’s seniors are living longer, are healthier, wealthier, have a better education, and are more experienced with technology (Leitãob et al., 2014). This trend is accompanied by the globalization and by the development of the information and communication technologies (ICT). Different studies also acknowledge the increasing number of adults using ICT solutions. The two aforementioned trends are highly connected and dependent on each other. Subsequently there is an increasing call for web-based applications to cater more for elderly users. Designing the ICT systems dedicated for older adults is more complex and challenging than for typical user. The young developers usually have limited experience and understanding in age-related requirements, especially in the context of designing graphical user interfaces (GUI). They are in fact the most important touchpoint where users really interact with the system. That is why there is a strong need to put emphasis on best practices in that area. The good starting point could be to define an universal set of principles for web-based applications. Thus the aim of the paper is to propose GUI assesment framework and evaluate our aging-centered ActGo-Gate web application based on authors’ framework. 2 ELDERLY USERS AND THE ICT IN THE CONTEXT OF DEMOGRAPHICAL CHANGES Globally, life expectancy for people born between 2010 and 2015 is 70 years (77 in Europe) and it is expected to keep rising. Moreover, population aged 60 or over accounts in 2015 for 12% of the global population (24% in Europe) and this age group is the fastest growing (3.26% per year) (UN, 2015). What is more, many of adult people have the basic skills that allow them to use most interactive devices, and thus, are more likely to already be familiar with computers, mobile devices, and related technology. Eurostat’s statistics on ICT show that in 2014 more than one third (38%) of the elderly population (aged 65–74) in the EU used the internet on a regular basis. Over one fifth (22%) of the analyzed population made use of internet banking, this was half the share recorded for the total population Rot, A., Kutera, R. and Gryncewicz, W. Design and Assessment of User Interface Optimized for Elderly People. A Case Study of Actgo-Gate Platform. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE 2017), pages 157-163 ISBN: 978-989-758-251-6 Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 157