Elderly User Mental Model of Reminder System

The growing numbers of elderly is inevitable. As we get older, we will experience some memory declines, thus an assistive technology such as reminder system is recommended. However, the uptake of reminder system is still low. Many researchers from the western countries are interested in exploring the use of reminder system as part of assistive technology for the elderly. Nevertheless, no research is solely focused on what actually elderly users expect from a reminder system. Hence, this paper attempts to assess and propose elderly mental model on reminder system. We conducted a series of studies: interview, usability evaluation and drawing activity with eight (8) participants. Our results revealed that elderly users expected that a reminder system should be simple, familiar, flexible and recognizable to them. We also learned that drawing and user study can be effective methods for assessing a mental model depending on type of user groups involved in the study. Author