“Memes” UX-Design Methodology Based on Cognitive Science Regarding Instrumental Activities of Daily Living

“Memes” design methodology was developed by Mitsukazu Okuda as a practical UX-design method. In the original, it was developed to analyze our cognitive process on usability testing for electric appliances. This approach is based on several key assumptions, including: people understand things through mental models in their minds; the mental model is evoked based on the context; in the mind, information input multimodally and the mental model formed by them are related and the whole structured knowledge is called “schema”; the schema consists of associations evoked by sensing signals; after sensing, evoking, and structuring are processed sequentially, it comes to understanding; the design thinking for designers goes in the opposite direction of the stream line of cognitive process for users. This method will be applied to the improvement of IADLs for the elderly because as science and technology continue to advance, there will be elderly people left behind. In a sense, they will desire an old-style instrumental tool that they are familiar with. One of the solutions is to change the interface design to the old-style in appearance without changing the function of the tool. This design concept is for specific people to use a tool with appropriate way by old-time interface design in their old memories. It is not a universal design because it cannot work for younger people who do not know the old-style interface design. it is so-called “the retrospective design” since the previous interface design is used instead of new interface design. In that way, this design method is useful for the elderly.