Optimizing a digital health education platform for the elderly: influences on annotation and interaction design

With the popularization of the Internet and mobile communication devices, digital health education contributes to the improvement of people's health literacy by overcoming the space–time restriction. However, due to the decline of cognitive level and physical function, the elderly often face problems, such as reading difficulties and low learning efficiency when receiving digital health education. The research object of this paper is the reading interface of the digital health education platform, thereby analyzing the impact of interface interaction design on the reading experience of the elderly. The research independent variables are hypertext annotation position (pop-up window annotation, in-text annotation and bottom annotation) and reading interaction mode (scrolling and paging), and the dependent variables are reading comprehension, vocabulary learning, cognitive load and system usability. A total of 180 elderly people participated in this research. The results of the 3 × 2 two-factor experiment showed that: (1) Different reading interaction modes will lead to significant differences of the cognitive load and system usability of the subjects, and the effect of scrolling is better than that of paging; (2) Different hypertext annotation positions show significant differences in vocabulary learning and system usability, pop-up window annotation performs the best in vocabulary learning, and the system usability of pop-up window annotation and bottom annotation is better than in-text annotation; (3) Hypertext annotation position and reading interaction mode have a significant interaction in reading comprehension, vocabulary learning and system usability. Comparatively, the scrolling in combination with bottom annotation is better. This research provides specific interface design suggestions for improving the learning experience of digital education for the elderly, and contributes to the expansion of the beneficiaries of digital education.