Middle-aged users' experience of short message service

Short Message Service (SMS) is a popular form of nonverbal mobile communication. To date, most research has focused upon the use of SMS by teenagers and young adults. Our work examines the use of SMS by middleaged users. We conducted a usability study evaluating the ease of use or difficulties experienced by middle-aged individuals whilst engaging in text message objectives and SMS tasks, in each of two pre-determined scenarios. Participants used two different mobile phone handsets to perform their tasks while the usability of each handset was assessed with respect to SMS tasks. The experiment gave insights into the usability issues experienced by middle-aged users such as the clarity of on-screen menus, and the ability to follow the navigational input provided by the hardware design of the mobile phone handsets.