A Design of Smartphone Dialog Message Considering Interruption Process by Age

Objective: Evaluation of smartphone dialog messages in interruption process according to user ages. Background: The domain for user interruption has been extended due to the rapid popularization of smartphone, which contains manifold function. The system dialog message, one of the interruption, could be a disruptive form affecting primary tasks, as it may often comprise IT jargons which appear to be linguistically complex, especially for the elderly. Method: Using 24 subjects, various experiments were conducted to inspect the effects of two age groups (twenties and sixties), three interruption stages (Primary task, Interruption task, Resumption), and four message types (quantity of jargon, length of message) on task performance time, comprehension rate, and subjective workloads. Results: The results yielded that the task performance time of sixties was significantly slower than that of twenties. The correlation analysis for the task performance time of sixties demonstrated that interruption task was significantly correlated with resumption. The result of sixties indicated relatively higher subjective workload on the messages of many jargons. Conclusion: This study suggested optimal guidelines to design system dialog messages for aged user group. Application: The results of this study could be utilized to construct user centered dialog message, which is widely needed not only for smartphone but for overall IT gadgets.