Designing for Older Adults: Principles and Creative Human Factors Approaches

As life expectancy increases, older workers and the retired form a large and growing proportion of the world’s population. Professionals working to develop systems and environments need to better accommodate the user needs of the older adult.

This new guide provides a practical introduction to human factors and the older adult. It considers the subject primarily from an engineering psychology perspective, heavily grounded in today’s scientific knowledge. The authors show how current understanding of age-related issues of perception, cognition, and movement control can be applied in practice. They also provide a reference source with guidelines and advice for design issues ranging from lighting, computer input device selection, and web site design, to training program development and work task design.

The text draws on research-oriented work and presents this in a form that can be used by the broad audience of product designers, health care practitioners, managers, and others who need answers to problems and require sound recommendations for design.

Arthur Fisk is Coordinator and Professor in Engineering Psychology in the School of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Neil Charness is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida State University, USA.
Sara Czaja is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of Miami, USA.
Wendy Rogers is Professor and Associate Chair in the School of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Joe Sharit is a Research Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Miami, USA.