  Population aging and the ubiquity of technology in everyday life have made
designing solutions for older adults a necessity. User-centered and
participatory design approaches include elderly users in the software
development process to some extent but do not encourage them to take a leading
role in designing applications to address their unmet needs. Teaching seniors
about software design could help them actively participate in creating much
needed solutions for their age group but this cannot be done without first
understanding their conceptual models of technology. Past experiences play a
significant role in determining the way learners model abstract concepts and so
older adults' conceptual models of user interfaces (and human-computer
interaction in general) differ from those used in teaching application design
to younger students. In this paper we analyze a workshop on user interface
design and prototyping for seniors to better understand older adults' learning
process and the issues they encounter while learning abstract ideas related to
human-computer interaction. We conclude the study by proposing guidelines for
teaching older adults abstract technology related concepts.
