A study of elderly users' interaction with Facebook on mobile devices: identification and definition of the personas

The use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets by different group of people has been growing in Brazil. Among the various audiences the elderly persons may be highlighted as a group who has different needs with regard to interaction with mobile devices. In parallel, the Facebook has been intensely adopted by elderly too. Considering the above aspects - the use of mobile devices and the inclusion of elderly users in social networks - the objective of this paper is to present the results of an exploratory study on the interaction of elderly users in the Facebook on mobile devices in Brazil, defining the personas that represent these users. For this, two methods were performed: a survey with 271 potential users that provided the data to delineate 3 personas, and a participatory design to verify if the real users, who represent the personas, had different characteristics when compared to the proposed personas.