Elementary graphical perception for older adults: a comparison with the general population.

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology
• Data Visualization

Background:

• Understanding the graphical perceptual information needs of older adults is crucial for designing accessible data visualizations.
• Previous research has not extensively compared the graphical perception abilities of older adults (≥60 years) with the general population (<60 years).

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify the graphical perceptual information needs of older adults using psychophysical experiments.
• To compare the performance of older adults with a general population across different chart types (bar, stacked, pie).

Main Methods:

• Online remote psychophysical experiments involving 202 participants (50 older adults, 50 general population for comparison judgments; 52 older adults, 50 general population for proportion judgments).
• Two experimental tasks: comparison judgments and proportion judgments of graphical displays.
• Data collected on task completion time and perceptual accuracy.

Main Results:

• Older adults exhibited longer task completion times (comparison: 4.09 s; proportion: 3.66 s) compared to the general population.
• Despite longer times, older adults achieved comparable perceptual accuracy to the general population.
• Bar charts demonstrated the highest effectiveness in terms of speed and accuracy for both age groups.
• Older adults showed superior accuracy in comparison tasks using pie charts relative to the general population.

Conclusions:

• Age is not a significant factor in perceptual accuracy for common graphical displays, although older adults may require more time.
• Bar charts are recommended as the most effective graphical display for broad audiences, including older adults.
• Specific chart types, like pie charts in comparison tasks, may offer advantages for older adults.