When Japanese elderly people play a Finnish physical exercise game: a usability study

Abstract

In this paper, we report the findings from the usability\ntesting of the Finnish Skiing Game with 24 Japanese elderly\nparticipants at the Sendai City Health Promotion Center in\nJapan. The main objective of the study is to investigate the\nparticipants’ feedback towards the usability of the Skiing\nGame, which was originally designed and developed for\nelderly Finnish people. We also investigated the Japanese\nelderly participants’ game experiences during and after the\ngameplay. The findings show that the Skiing Game was an\neasy and user-friendly game for the elderly participants.\nTheir gameplay experiences during and after the game\nsession were fairly positive. Most of the participants were\ninterested in the gameplay, and they agreed that digital\ngames could be an effective way of exercising. In this study,\nwe observed that the Finnish Skiing Game is a suitable game\nfor the elderly Japanese people because of its simple\ninterface, easy game action, and friendly game context. In\nthis paper, we provide the usability guidelines and\nrecommendations that we learned from this study.