Casual mobile games for the elderly: a usability study

The elderly population is increasing in Brazil. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in the last ten years the elderly population increased 47,8% while the increasing proportion in the overall population was 21,6%. This fact raises the need for new forms of leisure and entertainment for this audience. Casual games on smartphones constitute an option for them. This paper presents the results of a usability evaluation of casual games for smartphones, considering the elderly. Each elderly who participated in the evaluation was asked to play five casual games installed on a smartphone and also to answer questionnaires. The contents of these questionnaires were based on a set of heuristics, obtained by the analysis and organization of guidelines collected from the literature, as well as other issues proposed by the authors. This study aimed to evaluate whether the set of used heuristics is valid to assess the usability of casual games on mobile device, focusing on the elderly. The results point to the need of interface adjustments on mobile casual games for the use by the elderly and also the need of exploring more this topic.