Screen Mirroring is not as Easy as it Seems: A Closer Look at Older Adults’ Cross-Device Experience Through Touch Gestures

ABSTRACT

Screen mirroring might be a way to improve older adults’ user experience of smart televisions (STVs) through smartphones. To examine this possibility, two experiments were conducted. Experiment I examined older adults’ difficulties of screen mirroring (mirroring smartphone screens to STVs) through five common touch gestures (“Drag,” “Slide,” “Zoom,” “Draw,” and “Handwrite”), in comparison to younger adults. The results indicated that a major problem for older adults is the frequent attention switching between the STV and smartphone screens. Therefore, experiment II explored how to reduce the need of attention switching through the touch gestures (“Tap,” “Slide + Tap,” and “Slide + Release”) and the button sizes (8, 14, and 20 mm) for different input postures. Thirty older adults participated in this experiment and their eye movements were tracked. Four major findings were derived. First, the “Zoom,” “Draw,” and “Handwrite” gestures in screen mirroring were difficult for older adults with a task completion rate lower than 68%. Second, the problem of frequent attention switching between the STV and smartphone was predominant for tapping tasks. Third, the “Slide + Tap” and “Slide + Release” touch gestures helped to reduce attention switching in tapping tasks more than the “Tap” for older adults, while the “Slide + Release” received the worst subjective feedback. Fourth, increasing the button size from 8 mm to 14 mm on smartphones can improve the task completion rate and the task efficiency in screen mirroring when older adults used the one-handed posture to tap.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by funding from the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing (cstc2016jcyjA0406) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants no. 71661167006).

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiwen Ouyang

Xiwen Ouyang is a user experience designer of China UnionPay Co. Ltd, Shanghai, China, and has been majoring in the specialty of Management (branch of human-computer interaction) at Chongqing University toward Master’s degree. Her research focuses on the usability of Smart TV for older adults.

Jia Zhou

Jia Zhou is an associate professor in the School of Management Science and Real Estate at Chongqing University and used to be a visiting scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on design information technology and services for older adults.

Honglian Xiang

Honglian Xiang is a Ph.D. student in the School of Management Science and Real Estate at Chongqing University and major in management science and engineering at Chongqing University. Her research focuses on older adults’ vulnerability to misinformation and fraud.