Adaptation to internet-based services by seniors in Turkey

Abstract

The motivation of this article is to analyze and define the barriers and opportunities in senior people’s adaptation to the Internet-based services in Turkey. Digitalization has emerged in developed countries where people’s lifestyle was molded by it, then the technology diffused to the developing countries including Turkey. With this emergence, internet-based applications have entered into people’s daily life activities such as shopping and using banking services. However, Turkey can be seen as a late-adopter of these digital technologies, yet Turkish companies have been fairly quick in adaptation and improving internet-based services to local needs. Today, many young and middle-aged users in Turkey are using above-mentioned services, and they take internet-based applications for granted in their daily life activities. On the other hand, senior people could not catch up with the diffusion of these kinds of internet-based services. There seem to be barriers to the adaptation of elderly people to the digitalized world and it seems to prevent usage of internet-based applications which makes accomplishing those tasks easier. A design researcher’s perspective can point out opportunity areas and provide innovative solutions to overcome barriers to adaptation. In this study, our approach is to conduct ethnographic interviews with senior people in Turkey in order to understand how they use internet-based services and how digitalization in this aspect is affecting their life. The second part of this study is to understand internet-based service providers’ perspective. By conducting interviews at service provider companies, we aim to understand their approach regarding the inclusion of senior users. As a result, service providers and end users will be examined simultaneously, therefore deeper analysis and conclusions will be obtained. To our knowledge, there is no research study investigating adaptation to internet-based services of seniors in Turkey from a design research perspective. As a conclusion, this study investigates the barriers in the adaptation of internet-based services by senior people in Turkey, and the study aims to find opportunities where design can help with the integration of the digital world and senior people.