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Article totally misses another major issue with an aging demographic: UX concerns. I'm 54. A UI with clutter, or carousels that move too fast, or text in a sma

Article totally misses another major issue with an aging demographic: UX concerns. I'm 54. A UI with clutter, or carousels that move too fast, or text in a small font (or one with low contrast against the background color/image) is hard to use. I also have middle-aged memory issues, which only get worse with age: I'm far less able to hold multiple bits of information in working memory, so I can get demotivated and give up when a website or app expects me to remember seemingly irrelevant details (hint: disabling copy/paste in password entry fields is a great way to lose me as a customer because I rely on 1password and know enough to use strong passwords — but I can't memorize them). Apps and websites designed by twenty somethings tend to assume twenty-something levels of cognitive performance and sensory ability and reflexes which older users once had but have now lost. And so on. … And before you comment to say "well, don't use the app/website, then", bear in mind that it's increasingly impossible to avoid filing your tax return online, dealing with your bank and credit cards via an app, ordering supermarket deliveries online (especially if, as with many elderly people, you're mobility-impaired) … There's a point at which bad UX design becomes life-threatening. This is well understood in human factors engineering in e.g. the aerospace sector, where aircraft cockpit controls are carefully designed to be where and do what pilots expect. But there comes a point at which badly-designed smartphone apps are going to become an actual hazard to users who are unable to use them as their (younger, able-bodied) designers expected.

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
A website which forces someone to manually type on their password (disabling copy/paste) has nothing to do with age, it's just a bad UI. It's just a worse experience for no practical benefit, for all age groups.
- degenerate 8y ago
  Age comes into play with how people react to bad UX. A youngster can learn the quirks of a bad UI, and deal with it (while hating it). An older person will simply choose to not use the product.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    Yes, and to get back to GP's point about not being able to avoid these interfaces in important situations, "choosing not to use the product" is underselling the problem again. It's worse than that, and the problem is getting worse.
    - KineticLensman 8y ago
      See my comment elsewhere about app-driven audio equipment. The option of not using 'the internet' or apps, etc is already being taken away right now for entire classes of household devices or services (e.g. banks with a friendly human).
  - Malic 8y ago
    "An older person will simply choose to not use the product." I completely agree. The older you get, the more you realize that patience isn't always a virtue.
0xDEFC0DE 8y ago
Carousels in particular are bloody stupid and lazy design and I wish they'd fall off the face of the earth already.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Carousels have a particular purpose which is amazing valuable for web designers. You deploy them when management cant decide what the most important thing is. After waiting 6 months with pressure mounting to go live, you wack in a carousel.
  - 0xDEFC0DE 8y ago
    6 months of indecision and I'll just make the call for them! If they come back and say "Wait, that's not what should be first on the page" then we know we're on our way to figuring it out.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    You can accomplish the same thing by randomly presenting one item per pageload.
Const-me 8y ago
About passwords, when I really need to enter them, I use the following 3 lines of VBScript: Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" ) WScript.Sleep( 5000 ) objShell.SendKeys "The Password" This gives 5 seconds to alt-tab to browser and click in the password input box.
sandworm101 8y ago
The market will respond. Look at television. Turn on CNN. Every add is for either a drug or retirement planning. Old people have all the money. As soon as old people start relying on smartphone, when they actually start using them as the young do today, the apps will adapt. Facebook is getting older. I'd expect the first real UI changes to begin there.
- asark 8y ago
  I'm not old (well, not that old) and I bounced off Facebook when I first tried it around 2010 or so, because I couldn't figure out where anything was or what anything did or meant. Recently have had to use their "workplace" product and it's just as bad as I remember. Their UX is so bad I can't figure out how to use their product, accessibility entirely aside. It's like Crusader Kings II but without the game to motivate me to figure it out, and also not apparently as necessarily complex so I'm not sure why it's so confusing.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  "Market" solutions can and do lead to race-to-the-bottom, or discriminatory, actions. Regulations can set a. floor. No, regulation isn't panacea, but neither are markets.
codetrotter 8y ago
While we are on the subject of UX design, since you talked a bit about it and I agree with what you are saying, could you take a look at a web app I built recently and tell me how you feel about it? I have made an effort for it to be very user friendly but I cannot be sure that what is user friendly to me is user friendly to others. (Also I have a couple of ideas that I have not yet implemented which will further improve the experience of using this app.) I considered waiting for a response before giving the link but since we are probably in different time zones (GMT+1 here) that would mean more overhead and it would mean you would have to check back so I am going to put the link here right away instead. https://www.tell-ned.no/ https://www.tell-ned.no/ I should add that some of the buttons don't do anything yet, because the app is still a work in progress.
rjp0008 8y ago
For the copy paste disable issue, you can usually paste into the address bar, and then select and drag the text down into the field. You may have to type and delete a character if they’re also listening for keypresses. Hope this helps you cause I hate it too!
gumby 8y ago
> hint: disabling copy/paste in password entry fields If you're using Safari on the Mac, a program called Stop The Madness junks crap like that for you.
mostlysimilar 8y ago
As a counterpoint, I lament the loss of high-density interfaces and applications with a lot of configuration options. I see the modern web moving more and more towards the lowest common denominator. I appreciate your perspective because I had previously not viewed it from an accessibility standpoint, but as application developers creating things that can be used with as little thought as possible, to the dismay of people like me. I think there's an opportunity to create tools and UI that can adapt for power users as well as people who need accessibility. Stripping everything out and placing large text on a plain white page and calling it accessibility seems like laziness. Or perhaps that unrelenting drive towards simplification for the sake of saving time/money. Anything that needs more support, more developer time, etc. is seen as a bad thing and avoided. Just some thoughts.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  High density, and configuration choices are not clutter. Their loss is a cargo cult fashion as much as bell bottom jeans or flat monochrome UI. :p I'm about the same age as Charlie. I need reading glasses and have wrist issues thanks to decades of constant typing. As I can feel some of the deterioration now I notice when I'm fighting it. I'm amazed so little accessibility has been achieved. Clutter is the irrelevance, the ads, the options they want you to click rather than the one you're looking for. The random mess that achieves nothing beneficial -- for me. Obsessions with flat monochrome UI (Hello Win 10) that no theme or setting can remove are clutter - informational clutter that ensures the usual channels are overloaded or missing. Clutter might not even be the one room, one app or one site, but become so when there's the whole house to consider, or the dozens of apps or sites the modern world expects you to use. I don't mind spending 10 or 20 minutes finding an option or setting, or buying a book, ONCE. I do mind when it's become so cluttered that every interaction with everyone takes 10, 20, 30 minutes from me -- for the benefit of some random company I have no choice about using anyway. Every current Amazon purchase takes far too long, as does phone co, electric co, bank, government or council. When every company and department over 3 people has the same useless, hateful queuing system and consigns serviec and continuity to the bin. "Your call is important to us". Bullshit, if it were you'd still have the local number answered after 3 rings. Tech is to serve them, the corporation, not us. Everyone's life has filled with clutter to give free time, and data, to serve the master^Wcorporate overlord. I got into tech because I could make things better, quicker, easier, more fun. It's none of those things any more mostly deliberately choosing the opposite. Laziness of UI is profitable -- that's the only care in this second gilded age. This is heading to rant. I'll stop now. :)

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

A website which forces someone to manually type on their password (disabling copy/paste) has nothing to do with age, it's just a bad UI. It's just a worse experience for no practical benefit, for all age groups.

degenerate 8y ago
Age comes into play with how people react to bad UX. A youngster can learn the quirks of a bad UI, and deal with it (while hating it). An older person will simply choose to not use the product.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Yes, and to get back to GP's point about not being able to avoid these interfaces in important situations, "choosing not to use the product" is underselling the problem again. It's worse than that, and the problem is getting worse.
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    See my comment elsewhere about app-driven audio equipment. The option of not using 'the internet' or apps, etc is already being taken away right now for entire classes of household devices or services (e.g. banks with a friendly human).
- Malic 8y ago
  "An older person will simply choose to not use the product." I completely agree. The older you get, the more you realize that patience isn't always a virtue.

0xDEFC0DE 8y ago

Carousels in particular are bloody stupid and lazy design and I wish they'd fall off the face of the earth already.

Angostura 8y ago
Carousels have a particular purpose which is amazing valuable for web designers. You deploy them when management cant decide what the most important thing is. After waiting 6 months with pressure mounting to go live, you wack in a carousel.
- 0xDEFC0DE 8y ago
  6 months of indecision and I'll just make the call for them! If they come back and say "Wait, that's not what should be first on the page" then we know we're on our way to figuring it out.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  You can accomplish the same thing by randomly presenting one item per pageload.

Const-me 8y ago

About passwords, when I really need to enter them, I use the following 3 lines of VBScript: Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" ) WScript.Sleep( 5000 ) objShell.SendKeys "The Password" This gives 5 seconds to alt-tab to browser and click in the password input box.

sandworm101 8y ago

The market will respond. Look at television. Turn on CNN. Every add is for either a drug or retirement planning. Old people have all the money. As soon as old people start relying on smartphone, when they actually start using them as the young do today, the apps will adapt. Facebook is getting older. I'd expect the first real UI changes to begin there.

asark 8y ago
I'm not old (well, not that old) and I bounced off Facebook when I first tried it around 2010 or so, because I couldn't figure out where anything was or what anything did or meant. Recently have had to use their "workplace" product and it's just as bad as I remember. Their UX is so bad I can't figure out how to use their product, accessibility entirely aside. It's like Crusader Kings II but without the game to motivate me to figure it out, and also not apparently as necessarily complex so I'm not sure why it's so confusing.
dredmorbius 8y ago
"Market" solutions can and do lead to race-to-the-bottom, or discriminatory, actions. Regulations can set a. floor. No, regulation isn't panacea, but neither are markets.

codetrotter 8y ago

While we are on the subject of UX design, since you talked a bit about it and I agree with what you are saying, could you take a look at a web app I built recently and tell me how you feel about it? I have made an effort for it to be very user friendly but I cannot be sure that what is user friendly to me is user friendly to others. (Also I have a couple of ideas that I have not yet implemented which will further improve the experience of using this app.) I considered waiting for a response before giving the link but since we are probably in different time zones (GMT+1 here) that would mean more overhead and it would mean you would have to check back so I am going to put the link here right away instead. https://www.tell-ned.no/ https://www.tell-ned.no/ I should add that some of the buttons don't do anything yet, because the app is still a work in progress.

rjp0008 8y ago

For the copy paste disable issue, you can usually paste into the address bar, and then select and drag the text down into the field. You may have to type and delete a character if they’re also listening for keypresses. Hope this helps you cause I hate it too!

gumby 8y ago

> hint: disabling copy/paste in password entry fields If you're using Safari on the Mac, a program called Stop The Madness junks crap like that for you.

mostlysimilar 8y ago

As a counterpoint, I lament the loss of high-density interfaces and applications with a lot of configuration options. I see the modern web moving more and more towards the lowest common denominator. I appreciate your perspective because I had previously not viewed it from an accessibility standpoint, but as application developers creating things that can be used with as little thought as possible, to the dismay of people like me. I think there's an opportunity to create tools and UI that can adapt for power users as well as people who need accessibility. Stripping everything out and placing large text on a plain white page and calling it accessibility seems like laziness. Or perhaps that unrelenting drive towards simplification for the sake of saving time/money. Anything that needs more support, more developer time, etc. is seen as a bad thing and avoided. Just some thoughts.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
High density, and configuration choices are not clutter. Their loss is a cargo cult fashion as much as bell bottom jeans or flat monochrome UI. :p I'm about the same age as Charlie. I need reading glasses and have wrist issues thanks to decades of constant typing. As I can feel some of the deterioration now I notice when I'm fighting it. I'm amazed so little accessibility has been achieved. Clutter is the irrelevance, the ads, the options they want you to click rather than the one you're looking for. The random mess that achieves nothing beneficial -- for me. Obsessions with flat monochrome UI (Hello Win 10) that no theme or setting can remove are clutter - informational clutter that ensures the usual channels are overloaded or missing. Clutter might not even be the one room, one app or one site, but become so when there's the whole house to consider, or the dozens of apps or sites the modern world expects you to use. I don't mind spending 10 or 20 minutes finding an option or setting, or buying a book, ONCE. I do mind when it's become so cluttered that every interaction with everyone takes 10, 20, 30 minutes from me -- for the benefit of some random company I have no choice about using anyway. Every current Amazon purchase takes far too long, as does phone co, electric co, bank, government or council. When every company and department over 3 people has the same useless, hateful queuing system and consigns serviec and continuity to the bin. "Your call is important to us". Bullshit, if it were you'd still have the local number answered after 3 rings. Tech is to serve them, the corporation, not us. Everyone's life has filled with clutter to give free time, and data, to serve the master^Wcorporate overlord. I got into tech because I could make things better, quicker, easier, more fun. It's none of those things any more mostly deliberately choosing the opposite. Laziness of UI is profitable -- that's the only care in this second gilded age. This is heading to rant. I'll stop now. :)