City Research Online

Abstract

While HCI research has often addressed the needs of older adults, they are often framed as being sceptical of digital technologies. We argue that while many older adults are circumspect users of digital technology, they bring rich and critical perspectives on the role of technology in society that are grounded in lived experiences across their life courses. We report on 20 technology life story interviews conducted with retirees over the age of 60. Our analy-sis shows how experiences of technology across their life courses signifcantly undermined participants' sense of competency, in-dependence, resilience, agency and control. Dissonances between what our participants valued and the perceived values of technology have led them to become critical adopters of technology, and resist its intrusion into certain aspects of their lives. We discuss how the critical perspectives of older adults and the value dissonances they experience are valuable for designing future digital technologies.

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	© ACM 2021. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445128
Publisher Keywords:	Life story interview, Older adults, Everyday resistance, Life course
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology T Technology > T Technology (General)
Departments:	School of Science & Technology > Computer Science

Export

Downloads