Older Adults´ Emotional User Experiences with Digital Health Services

Abstract

Older adults are at risk of being excluded from digital society. They do not always find digital health services appealing, or they may have challenges with them. We investigated older adults´ emotional user experiences with digital health services and aimed to give designers tools to make digital health services more appealing for older adults. We interviewed 16 older adults about their experiences with digital health services. The use of digital health services brought joy and increased self-confidence. On the other hand, older adults had many negative emotional user experiences, including fear of pressing buttons and embarrassment of incompetence. In the future, designers should actively look for solutions that alleviate older adults´ fears and further encourage them to use digital health services. To enable that, proposals are made for designing digital health services.