While most of today’s children, young people, and adults are both consumers and producers of digital content, very little is known about older people as digital content creators. Drawing on a three-year ethnographic study, this paper reports on the digital video production and appropriation of approximately 200 older people (aged 60–85). They generated 320 videos over the course of the study. We show their motivations for engaging in digital video production, discuss their planned video making, and highlight their creativity while editing videos. We show the different meanings they ascribed to digital videos in their social appropriation of these objects, the meaningful strategies they adopted to share videos, and the impact on their perceived wellbeing. Furthermore, we outline the solutions the participants developed to overcome or cope with interaction issues they faced over time. We argue that the results portray older people as active and creative makers of digital videos with current video capturing, editing, and sharing technologies. We contend that this portrayal both encourages us to re-consider how older people should be seen within human–computer interaction and helps to frame future research/design activities that bridge the grey digital divide.

This article reports on an exploratory study aimed to identify which ways of marking required and optional fields help older people fill in web forms correctly. Drawing on a pilot study and selective attention research in ageing, modified versions of widely used forms were created, in which standard asterisks were replaced with one of three alternatives: large asterisks (double standard size), textual labels and a simple binary classification of fields. Older novice computer users participated in this study (N = 88). The quantitative results were independent of the type of form and showed that the method of denoting required fields had a significant effect on the number of errors (measured as required fields not being filled (p < 0.05)). The participants made fewer errors in the binary classification than in the others (p < 0.05), while the differences between standard asterisks, large asterisks and labels were not significant (p > 0.05). The qualitative findings revealed that the participants felt overloaded with information when using every method except the binary classification. These results challenge widespread design solutions for older people (e.g. enlarging elements) and suggest that reducing selective attention demands can help us meet their accessibility needs.

Based on a 3-year ethnographical study, this paper discusses the prolonged use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools by approximately 400 older people in an adult education centre in Barcelona (Spain). Contrary to oversimplified views of older people as ICT users, this paper shows that they make a very rich use of CMC tools. Relevant elements of this use are their permanent desire to feel and be included, social, independent and competent ICT users. Despite the numerous interaction issues they face when using ICT, some are constant across different tools. Difficulties due to cognition limit their interactions more severely than those problems due to perceiving visual information or using the mouse. By examining the longitudinal aspect of the study, this paper addresses the evolution of technology use and whether the interaction issues that most of the current older people exhibit will be relevant when today’s more ICT literate young adults grow older. Interaction issues due to cognition are time-persistent, and independent of both experience and practice with ICT. Difficulties reading from the screen or using input devices are overcome with ICT experience. The strategies adopted by older people for coping with all these interaction issues are always targeted at feeling and being included, social, independent and competent ICT users. The results deepen current understanding of tools use in connecting older people with their social circles and the interaction issues most of them encounter when using ICT. The results also suggest that cognitive-related problems will be the most important ones in our work with the next generation of older people.

The IMS-QTI, and other related specifications have been developed to support the creation of reusable and pedagogically neutral assessment scenarios and content, as stated by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. This paper discusses how current specifications both constrain the design of assessment scenarios, and limit content reusability. Also suggest some solutions to overcome these limitations. The paper is based on our experience developing and testing an IMS QTI Lite compliant assessment authoring tool, QAed. It supports teacher centering, which is quite neglected when designing such tools. In the paper, the author also discuss how to make compatible standards support and user centering in eLearning applications and provide some recommendations for the design of the user interfaces.