Spiritual User Experience (iSUX) for Older Adult Users using Mobile Application

Abstract

The increasing number of aging populations worldwide versus vast developments in mobile technology creates questions on how older adults adapt and apply mobile technology in their daily life. This research focused on spiritual user experience for older adult users because older adults are claimed to be more spiritually inclined as they aged. Despite high profile calls for research in the area of spirituality, the research pertaining spirituality in HCI is still in infancy state. Recent literatures discover most studies focus on design for spiritual user experience and evaluation of spiritual application for adult users, but fundamental of spirituality and its elements from the view of user experience is limited. Therefore, this study employs qualitative method approach within an interpretive paradigm to propose a model for Spiritual User Experience from the perspective of Islamic older adult users. The Geneva Emotional Musical Scale (GEMS) was adopted as a theoretical lens in order to gain deeper insights on the spirituality elements. A single case study was conducted with the total of 11 participants to research on the spirituality user experience elements among older adults. The triangulation of qualitative data collection through 3E diary, interviews and observations was conducted. All data were analyzed verbatimly using thematic analysis. Six themes emerged from the analysis which are effectiveness, efficiency, learnability, satisfaction, sublimity and vitality. These themes are further categorized into 10 attributes; effectiveness (accessibility features), efficiency (simplicity and portability), learnability, satisfaction (attractiveness and reliability), sublimity (transcendence and peacefulness) and vitality (energy and joyful activation). These are embedded into a model known as Spiritual User Experience (iSUX) which are evaluated by the Islamic religious experts, user experience expert and older adult’s representatives. This model could be a reference for spiritual model development apps among developers and provide understanding for researchers in the HCI domain. In conclusion, the Spiritual User Experience (iSUX) is hope to increase the understanding of spirituality from the domain of user experience.