Inclusiveness in the Design of Mobile Payment Products for Chinese Elderly Users

Abstract: As the world is facing a sudden public health crisis and an aging population, mobile payment products are widely used in the epidemic because of their ease of transaction and contactless security. However, data show that there are few mobile payment users over 60 years old in China, and this emerging digital technology has excluded many silver-haired generations. Through market research, product analysis, and user interviews, this study finds that the reasons for the low usage of mobile payment products by older users in Chinese society include: poor product inclusiveness and the lack of acceptance of digital products by older people. Most research in this area has focused on using technology acceptance model (TAM) and creating "elder models" specifically for the elderly. However, traditional TAM and polarized "normal model" and "elderly model" product models have made it difficult to expand the inclusiveness of products. This study innovatively introduces an inclusive design approach to constructing a TAM to optimize existing mobile payment products. The study selects WeChat Pay, which has the highest usage rate in China, as the research object. Through qualitative and quantitative survey methods, the study deeply investigates the pain points and needs of silver-haired people and integrates them with the needs of regular users, distills the key influencing elements in the new model to build an inclusive TAM, and finally gives recommendations for inclusive and age-appropriate design. The optimized design of WeChat Payments is based on the recommendations. Finally, the usability test is conducted with 15 elderly and 15 normal users to verify that the optimized design is inclusive.

Keywords: Chinese elderly users, Mobile payment, Inclusive design, Technology acceptance model

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003341

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