Designing information and communication technology for older adults has been identified as one of the grand challenges of HCI. HCD+ is a Participatory Design framework based on Human Centered Design, aiming to provide practical guidelines to improve older adults’ participation in systems development. This paper describes a study evaluating these guidelines with 19 older adults aged between 60 and 77 years and 12 younger systems developers.

Results indicate three main factors of concern for working with older adults: (1) the commitment of a trusted person in a group, (2) the atmosphere and social interaction, and (3) reciprocity of the engagement. Furthermore, results show benefits for everyone: (younger) participants as developers gained a better understanding of the potential user group and their mental models and thus felt more secure in finding appropriate design solutions.