Not Just a Number: A Multidimensional Approach to Ageing in HCI

TL;DR

Not Just a Number argues that chronological age is an insufficient proxy for understanding ageing in HCI. It adapts a multidimensional typology of age to the CHI literature and systematically codes a $222$-publication corpus (2014–2024) to reveal how nine dimensions of aging are operationalised in design research. The study demonstrates that age is socially constructed and interacts with lifecourse resources, shaping the so-called age-based digital divide beyond simple decline narratives. It calls for reflexive, constructivist and intersectional analyses to broaden recruitment, reduce bias, and better understand technology adoption in later life.

Abstract

The focus on managing problems that can arise for older adults has meant that extant HCI and Ageing research has not given the concepts of 'age' and 'ageing' the explicit theoretical attention they deserve. Attending to this gap, we critically examine a ten-year corpus of CHI publications through the lens of an existing typology which we have further developed to analyse how age is understood, interpreted and constructed in the field of HCI. Our resulting multidimensional typology of age in HCI elucidates the distinctive characteristics of older adults considered when designing with and for this user group, but also highlights the need for a more critical, reflexive, social constructivist approach to age in HCI. Applying this approach, we explore age as a multidimensional system of stratification to better understand the phenomenon of the age-based digital divide.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Schematic of corpus creation.
• Figure 2: Venn diagram of publications from Corpus A and Corpus B.