ITV services for all people, a design study

Is it possible to design easy to use ITV applications for all? Well it should be, but how do we design to achieve this objective? This study is the first of five aiming at a design for all strategy where focus is to find the most difficult areas in further designactivities to concentrate the on.The ITV service in this design study is intended to bring easy and understandable information to the guests at a municipal elderly care centre and the guest's next of kin. This design should workboth on a computer and on set top boxes for TV. The elderly target group has severe difficulties due to the system of care in Sweden, where elderly people live in their own homes as long aspossible. Their difficulties can be of both psychiatric and physiological nature.Individuals with defined difficulties in this UCD study was more effective than other to point out the difficult areas of the design and at the same time give more hints to the designer of how to solve them. The consequence of the results of the study is to start to rethink of how we choose users to participate in the design process. Maybe the design process becomes more effective and at the same time lowers the need of accessibility adaptation after the design when not only choosing representative participants in the process.
QC 20120514