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Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

234 points by probably_wrong 7y ago

erkose 7y ago
Case in point. This article does not display when cookies are disabled.
- deleted 7y ago
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torstenvl 7y ago
Irony is my favorite form of humor. This is how the article shows up for me: https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs
- js2 7y ago
  That’s horrible. Let me recommend 1BlockerX: https://ibb.co/yNQ4T08 https://ibb.co/yNQ4T08 Or use Safari reader mode. Or both.
  - recursive 7y ago
    Using an add-on to get a usable experience is nearly the same as admitting defeat.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      It's also a necessity. Beyond uBlock Origin for the abusive parts, I've also recently started to use Stylus to fix bad design of sites I visit frequently. Few minutes with browser's Inspector and I can usually whip up a little bit of CSS that removes unnecessary whitespace, UI trinkets, and densifies the site by factor of 2 to 5.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        I've been doing that Stylus thing for years.
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    I wouldn’t recommend 1Blocker. I had it and was disappointed at how they rarely (if ever?) update their filter lists (they’re also not using the standard lists like EasyList). AdGuard Pro is much better and supports standard lists like EasyList and Fanboy’s lists, along with region-specific lists and DNS-based blocking (so blocks ads/cancer in non-browser contexts too).
    - js2 7y ago
      I’ve been using 1Blocker for a long time since back when there where few choices and it was clearly the best option. I like that it syncs with my desktop and use it with Safari on macOS too. I also like that it’s easy to whitelist sites, that it’s easy to block elements of specific sites, and that it’s an indie app. I think the reason for not using the full EasyList is that Safari limits the number of content blocker rules to 50k, less than can accommodate the full EasyList. I wonder how AGP gets around that. In any case, I rarely see ads with 1Blocker. The one thing it doesn’t block reliably is ad blocker detection, but I’m not sure that’s even possible for a Safari content blocker to do. Looking at the App Store, I see there are a lot of blockers now. How did you decide on AGP over the others?
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        For me the main reason has been EasyList support instead of some kind of home brew list (they’re pretty much always based on EasyList anyway, but with a homebrew list you explicitly rely on the developer updating that list).
eigenspace 7y ago
Thought provoking article. One difficult thing to grapple with here though is that my impression of the elderly is that the bulk of them are living on a tight budget to make sure that their retirement savings last them through their remaining years. Well designed, hip and beautiful products typically come at a hefty premium (think Apple tax). How many elderly people are willing to pay a premium for good, user friendly design? Could it be that the reason we don't see better design for the elderly is because most of them are unwilling or unable to pay extra for it, unlike the young?
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  As a group they have much more money than poor college students.
  - eigenspace 7y ago
    I think that’s a shallow analysis. The difference is that college students expect to make more money in the future so they don’t put any thought into stretching their dollar. Retirees are the opposite. They may have bigger bank accounts, but for most of them, they know that’s all they’ll ever get.
    - gliop 7y ago
      My neighbor is a widower schoolteacher who gets discounts on things including property taxes on her mansion because of that, despite being multimillionaire by marit inheritance and receiving social security benefits young people can only dream of (and no college loan debt, of course). The "fixed income" cry is just a ploy old people use to get discounts.
      - sctb 7y ago
        When we talk about substantiveness, what we mean is that we want commenters to post information that has a reasonable trail back to our shared reality (another commenter here sometimes uses the phrase “connect the dots”). Anecdotes can be interesting and valuable, but they don't form a basis for such broad claims as you've made. So if you want to share an anecdote just share the anecdote, and if you want to make a claim please back it up with substantial evidence—and do so with consideration. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ssivark 7y ago
I speculate whether this observation indicates that most of the chatter around "design" is signaling focused on appearing hip/trendy -- largely a branding effort overlaid on top of company goals, rather than an effort to think through actual user needs from the ground up. That would explain why so much of the focus is on fads.
- eswat 7y ago
  I sometimes wonder if the branding effort I’ve seen over the past few years is even overlaid company goals. A lot of it seems to be designers signaling to other designers. Like Dribbble has expanded across the web and product landing pages are now the shots.
- btown 7y ago
  There is a hive mind of designers, but one must follow this hive mind to remain relevant. It is actually the case that skeuomorphic design, all the rage less than a decade ago, would be a turnoff to users today. Now, could this be because people associate good design with successful new products, and those new products have happened to use a different UI mentality for no other reason than signaling to a design-minded minority? Perhaps. But those new products do indeed exist, and they have truly moved the goalposts. One must follow design trends or perish.
  - double0jimb0 7y ago
    Or maybe design is just entertainment. It’s a story that keeps the monkey mind engaged in what is most likely a banal exercise.
- asark 7y ago
  It's more than that—it's peacock feathers. You do it to signal you have money to burn looking "modern". You'll even see people on HN complain that a site looks "old", sometimes—not bad, just old. Keeping up with trends signals you're doing well enough to keep your site from appearing old, so looking maintained and up-to-date. I think it's related to how chain stores & restaurants look so much more polished these days, and completely re-design their logo and colors (repainting whole buildings) every few years. They didn't used to do that, and everything generally looked a lot less "slick" than it does now. All I can figure is a couple of them started doing it to differentiate themselves from smaller chains and mom-n-pop stores (that couldn't afford that crap) and the rest started doing it so they didn't look left behind. Such a waste.
RyJones 7y ago
I characterize this as "all PMs have perfect eyes and skin". The first iteration of the Microsoft Surface featured a micro SD slot that was unusable if you had anything less than perfect, pliable finger nails. I cracked a nail so many times using that slot I gave up. Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts.
- gumby 7y ago
  “You’re looking at it wrong.”
  - RyJones 7y ago
    I returned a set of airpods. We both struggled to get the serial number of those things
- tzs 7y ago
  > Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts Tip: take a photo and view it in the photo app on your phone or desktop. It is often much easier to read then. If it is not, it can often be made so by playing with the editing options. This also often works with things like power bricks that sometimes have the specs "printed" in raised plastic with no coloring to distinguish it from the rest of the case.
  - m463 7y ago
    I set triple-click on my iphone to magnifier. Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Magnifier -> On Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Magnifier (of course those settings are somewhat inaccessi... well you know...)
    - EricE 7y ago
      This - should be a card in the box on top of the iPhone explaining magnifier. So incredibly useful!
areoform 7y ago
Thoughtless design is everywhere. My company uses Discord for comms and I’m active in several Discord communities, but my vision impaired co-worker isn’t. Not because of a lack of want, but because Discord has been coasting on accessible design for years. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/4tn00z/when_will_discord_be_accessible_to_those_who_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/4tn00z/when_wil... Everything takes more resources than we expect, but surely a theme for their client (we do have some proof that it is theme-able) that is friendlier for screen readers shouldn’t take more time than an entire games store? For me, the big takeaway from this article and companies like Discord is that people just don’t seem to care. And that’s often the status quo until an Apple comes along. We forget this, but back before the resurgence of Apple design was an afterthought, not a forethought even though there were obvious gains to be had and a better future to lead towards. But the vast majority of companies avoided the obvious win until Apple’s stock price shocked them into caring. A significant fraction of everyone’s user base (including the core users) would benefit from accessible and thoughtful design, because like the article says, we’re all disabled sometimes. Now, we just need to figure out which company will have to show the world how to do it.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  The dismal accessibility adoption on the web is horrendous, but working for a company that has to deliver accessible web apps to comply with Federal law has really opened my eyes to how terrible to ecosystem of accessibility is. My team spends about a quarter of our time working strictly on accessibility, and we find ourselves straying from the beaten path often in order to accommodate a specific screenreader/OS combo. We run into situations all the time where we're unable to get insight from the docs because something is buried deep in the spec. We also have to draw a line in the sand about which screenreaders to support and which ones to pass on, which pisses off clients that use screenreaders that we don't support. Automated accessibility audit results sometimes contradict documentation around best practices, which can be frustrating. The other thing I've learned is that developers usually hate working on accessibility issues because the screenreaders are much less intuitive to use and can really muck up your workflow if you're trying to ensure that an interface is completely accessible. While I agree that we as a community can do better, I think that web accessibility in its current form is largely a failure because people see it as a cost that they're not interested in incurring, possibly because of the issues I've listed above.
louprado 7y ago
Regarding a comment the author made in passing: For the increasing number of people who have cataract surgery, the eye’s lenses have ben replaced with plastic, which usually have a fixed focus. (Artificial lenses that can be focused are under development.) My dad recently had cataract surgery and I just assumed he was getting would be a deformable lens that would give him the ability to focus again. Does anyone know why it is so hard to develop such a lens ? As far as medical breakthroughs it seems like low hanging fruit and most people over the age of 45 could benefit from such a surgery since that is the age at which our lenses begin to harden and can no longer be shaped by our ciliary muscles.
- all2 7y ago
  > Does anyone know why it is so hard to develop such a lens ? As far as medical breakthroughs it seems like low hanging fruit ... Not in medicine or medical research, so great grains of salt required. 1) immune rejection 2) non-degradable 3) same modulus of elasticity as a biological lens (and maintains elasticity) 4) (relatively) cheap source materials 5) (relatively) cheap manufacture 6) survive all testing; up to FDA approval Can anyone in medicine comment on this?
  - beautifulfreak 7y ago
    There's a relevant article on the HN front page now. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-cornea/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-corn...
    - fhars 7y ago
      No, that‘s about cornea replacements and is irrelevant for the current discussion.
- fhars 7y ago
  The lens is suspended by a ring of fibres about 1-2μm thick from the ciliar muscle. Getting accommodation to work with a synthetic lens would require a substitute suspension mechanism to attach the lens to the muscle. And it would probably be useful if it could be implanted without temporarily removing the front or the eye including the iris. Compare that to a small cut to the side of the eye to extract the old lens and inject a new one that is held in place mechanically.
mirimir 7y ago
Strap wrenches are great for jar lids. I sometimes use two. One for the jar, and one for the lid.
sn41 7y ago
I'm a technology enthusiast in my 40s. Even I lose my patience, to say nothing of people of my parents' generation, when I try to travel to a new country which has a different set of showers, cooking ranges and washing machines/dryers. To say nothing of older people I've seen on flights who struggle to turn on their entertainment consoles. Turning on a device should not be a puzzle-solving exercise. As Alan Kay said, "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible." Too often, the user interfaces make complex things doable, and simple things possible, with great effort. (Also I don't know if this is a thing in design methodologies : I prefer if designers avoid having basic functionalities as a result of a sequence of steps, rather, I like to have them as separate top-level buttons)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Also I don't know if this is a thing in design methodologies : I prefer if designers avoid having basic functionalities as a result of a sequence of steps, rather, I like to have them as separate top-level buttons It is if you care about ergonomics - the rule is, the more frequent an action, the less key/mouse/fingerpresses it should take to invoke. It is not if you only care to make it look pretty, good for the demo or to encite first-time users to subscribe to your SaaS.
geuszb 7y ago
My theory on this is that it is easier for designers to empathize with users who are the same age or younger, since in these situations they've had the experience of the user's age, whereas very few designers have had the experience of being old (save for the author of TFA).
- aasasd 7y ago
  Absolutely, it's that plus the fact that young designers and programmers crank out much more output. And they're cheap. Myopia and hand aches give excellent perspective on the problems of accessibility in UI design. Alas, they also tend to limit my time with the machine and productivity in that time. It's about the same how Reddit users' average age is purportedly twenty-something but the content and comments are dominated by teenagers. Teens just post way more. Ultimately, accessibility for the elderly is a typical case where one has to invest additional effort by choice and principle. I.e. not gonna happen under just the market forces.
  - gliop 7y ago
    More output means more bugs.
- gav 7y ago
  It's hard to empathize with abstract people, you need to observe and engage actual people in their environment, which costs time and money. Too often people are stuck in a conference room talking about personas. I've ended up frustrated at clients telling them "you are not your customers" endless times. It's amazing how much you learn getting out and talking to customers. One of my favorite examples is for a company that sold plumbing supplies to contractors. The biggest feedback was that these guys spent most of the day in a truck and needed to be able to place orders on their phones and they begged the team to make sure that all the buttons (and links) were much bigger so that their fat fingers could click on them: "this was designed by a pianist". There's so many examples of interactions that show that the designer didn't understand what the end user is really trying to do. My bank makes me enter a first and last name for transfer recipients, but only use the last name on the confirmation step, however the bulk of my transfers are to family members!
nilram 7y ago
My partner's mom, age 94, got new hearing aids and the app that can control them (adjust focus on front/side/back, high/low/midrange, etc), runs only on iOS. We got her an iPad mini and I set it up so she can (A) read the Washington Post, (B) read a poetry app, (C) control her hearing aids, and (D) not much else (so as not to be confusing). Much to my surprise, the hearing aid app does not adjust it's font size per the iOS system settings, and it does not have any font adjustment of it's own. It also has a background picture that interferes with focusing on controls. I'm boggled that a company producing a product for those with hearing-impairment doesn't recognize that many of it's users may be in age-related decline, and that can include vision and cognitive impairment.
- aasasd 7y ago
  Maybe Apple could hint to the app vendor that they should support the system feature? I'd probably contact the app authors themselves first, though. It might happen that the issue is resolved quickly with no confrontation.
  - nilram 7y ago
    I’ll be making my suggestions to the hearing aid company who sells the devices and the app. If there is any response at all, I expect it will be congenial. However, I doubt it will be resolved quickly since even non-invasive medical devices like hearing aids have rigorous and time-consuming reviews.
- wereHamster 7y ago
  Most likely the app was written by a third-party contractor who didn't know much about who the users are, they only received the requirements (app must do X and Y) and delivered.
  - nilram 7y ago
    Absolutely. That’s why I’ll be contacting the hearing aid company, who is ultimately responsible for those requirements.
EricE 7y ago
The trend towards lack of physical controls in cars is absolutely bonkers. I'm gobsmacked anyone thinks the Tesla Model 3 is good design. Same with desk phones. Anyone who deals with customers at a counter doesn't have time to constantly look at a touch screen for buttons that may or may not be there. Nothing like chucking muscle memory out the window in the name of aesthetics :p
- synaesthesisx 7y ago
  Think of it this way - imagine using an iPad/tablet while driving. Now imagine your grandfather using an iPad, while also driving. Unfortunately accessibility & haptics have been pushed to the backburner.
  - ngold 7y ago
    Now imagine your grandfather trying to change the radio station on a touchscreen display while driving.
- marnett 7y ago
  Unfortunately I think it’s more about pricing as oppposed to better design paradigms. Replacing embedded system engineers with cheap java engineers? Yea that requires a screen.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Similar to capacitive touch panels on appliances. You'd think this sci-fi look is more expensive to make, but it's actually cheaper. The "buttons" have no moving parts.
    - tty2300 7y ago
      And should last longer, make it easier to clean and not get gunk stuck in it causing it to jam up.
      - 7y ago
OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
The article makes some good points about not talking down to older people, but here's the thing the article misses: aspiration. Advertisers test all sorts of messaging before they roll out a large campaign, if empowered old people sold units we would already see more of them in ads. Advertising is largely playing on the target audiences emotions, selling them an idealized form of themselves if only they brought X product. Old people dont aspire to be old. They are, for the most part, quite happy to buy products fronted by younger people who remind them of their younger selves. So the missing grey dollar goldrush this article bemones is largely already being served, and its worth considering that most ads must simultaneously reach multiple demographics, would you aspire to drink old lady coke? Advertisers are not stupid.
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  The Coke ads currently in Australia (and apparently from the UK) feature an elderly man trying a Coke No Sugar for the first time, who then goes on to ask "What else haven't I tried?" and tick off a bucket list while Queen's "I Want To Break Free" plays in the background. There's absolutely ways to do it if you want to. https://youtu.be/O223tQkCuag https://youtu.be/O223tQkCuag
rwmj 7y ago
Don Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic and very relevant today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Everyday-Things-MIT-Press/dp/0262525674/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Everyday-Things-MIT-Press/dp...
- stevenwoo 7y ago
  I've read this book three or four times and it's kind of crazy he was at Apple as an executive and had no lasting impact, iOS is now full of hidden gestures/features with low discoverability/intuitiveness. Nobody there with the power to make decisions agrees with the basic premise of this book.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    On the other hand, Donald Norman also came to embrace (and somewhat found) the idea of User Experience design. He pretty much admitted that his earlier focus on design was too narrow. And I'd argue that Apple very much likewise broadened their focus to the entire user experience.
simion314 7y ago
An issue I hit yesterday, I installed Chromium and I went in the Settings to disable the Google auto login, it did not work for me and I was very frustrated. After a few attempts I noticed that when you change the setting a small notification appears on the lower corner of the screen that I need to restart the program. Maybe that kind of notification is cool and slick (I don't think it is) but it is easy to miss for people like me with mad eyes (not sure if normal eyes can catch the notification if you are focusing on other corner of the screen)
Causality1 7y ago
For some reason companies hate text now. Instead of a menu, you get icons with as minimalistic a design and as little difference between them as possible. Entering your user name and password is two separate pages for some reason now. Window borders have disappeared so instead of knowing at a glance where you can click and drag you have to closely watch your mouse pointer change. A big "Hewwo 2 U!" screen is added between turning your computer on and being able to enter your password as if you foolishly left your desktop in your jeans pocket and Windows wants to make sure you're not pocket-PowerPointing. It's like they're trying to alienate everyone not intimately familiar with the system and appeal to the lowest common denominator at the same time.
- __alias 7y ago
  I for one like the material minimalistic menu items we get now. (Assuming they use standard material design icons) it makes it quickly recognisable and accessible.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    If you use them constantly. For example, most of my Gmail use is on an android device, which has a radically different UI than the web mail. When I use the web mail, probably once a month or so, I have to use tool tips every time because I've forgotten which tiny grey on grey button is reply, which is spam, etc.
- dictum 7y ago
  I don't mean to defend the trend of using undecipherable icons with no text labels, but this is an example of how requirements can clash: internationalization. Sometimes the text label that would fit in English is too long when properly translated to another language. (Icons are problem too: they can be meaningless to an user. However, they have the benefit of a somewhat constrained size, unlike words and phrases.) I personally prefer interfaces that scroll, like web pages, to interfaces with a fixed or partially fixed frame, like mobile apps. A fixed frame works when you can fit it in full in your screen; this was easier on a low-resolution but large display than on a very high resolution 4-6 inch display.
altitudinous 7y ago
I'm 51 and work in tech. I now understand the nuances in this article. I'll probably understand them better as time goes on. Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it. Young readers probably skimmed over the bit about frequency definition, captions etc. Everyone older than 50 gets it. I don't get the bit with walking sticks yet, but I am not there yet. But I realise that. I was young and bulletproof once - even up until 5 years ago I didn't understand what this article was about. I gather by reading the comments here that most don't. The challenge is explaining ageing to anyone under the age of about 45, when it is entirely out of their scope of experience, in a demographic who think they know it all. Ageism is embedded in our society, whose best attempt at inclusion and diversity is based on colour of skin and gender. I don't think it will change, it has probably been the same for thousands of years. I had to go around to a friend of my mothers the other day - in her 70's, her younger relatives had switched off captions on her Samsung TV. She had no idea how to turn them back on. It is hidden about four layers deep in the fu.king menus. Why isn't it a button an on/off button on the remote? Another button amongst the 20 already there? In the manual - It got a paragraph mention about 30 pages in, in a tiny font. So discriminatory. I am seriously thinking of making a career of this, while I still can!!!
- Nokinside 7y ago
  Fully agree. There is also the 'no bullshit' attitude that starts to emerge when you turn 40. You want product to do a thing. Not to engage you in any way. You either already have a life or you know you will never have one. Many older people have money and they are willing to spend it if does a thing and it's easy to get. If Amazon would buy Paul Graham's old Viaweb code, it would need just little updating to become a tool that generates killer UI's for the aging population in the developing world. Plain html5 with commons sense and good defaults with tiniest amount of javascript is all you need for a well functioning web service. Incidentally Hacker News is not far from this ideal. This is what good news site looks like: http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    I was thinking the other day what a good TUI would like on the web (without throwing out baby with the bathwater).
goldenkey 7y ago
Isn't it moreso that old people are daft and impatient? I am nearly 30 and can figure out systems, both new and old, and find that patience and faith is vitally important. I notice my parents don't even bother to explore the menus or dropdowns or well..much of anything, before they demand to be helped. It's gonna be very hard to sell me on menus being ageist. I hope you can read my frustration..
- altitudinous 7y ago
  I rest my case. You should be asking yourself why, do you see you don't understand their behaviour? Why do they behave differently in menus to you, don't condemn them because they do behave differently to you.
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    At the same time, and without condemnation, older people CAN learn to be more playful/exploratory and patient with tech. Yes, tech can and should be designed better. But if there were one or two tips that could be disseminated, to old and young (most youth are not tech savvy, actually): 1. If you can't seem to figure it out, you aren't alone (probably poor design) 2. Willingness to calmly "play around" and explore menus/options/buttons is THE KEY to getting almost anything to work
- llamathrowaway 7y ago
  If you’re ‘nearly 30’ then it’s likely you grow up with modern gadgets, and since you are on HN there is a higher chance that you have a stronger than average interest in electronics. Your parents did not grow up like you. They grew up in a time when a few knobs is all you need to operate a home appliance. And they are probably more interested in what’s being played on TV, rather than the TV itself. The complexity of today’s electronics and softwares is getting out of control. If you have to actively explore all menus in order to use something normally, then I suspect the UI is poorly designed. But there is no incentive for their designers to improve, unless they acknowledge that their perception of electronics is very different from the average users.
sadness2 7y ago
If you succeed in creating technology that will change the world, you will then have to live in said changed world as an old person.
mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
I’m 33, my car had a touch screen display and the Bluetooth sync function is 3 clicks deep. If I were to start driving right away, it becomes a huge hassle to try to sync to Bluetooth. Doesn’t help that you can access the first 2 screens but the 3rd is locked since I’m driving. It’s as if some engineer somewhere thought the 3rd screen is more distracting than the first 2. I always imagine how easy it would be to have a physical button I can just click any time. Ahh the days of modern design... gotta love it.
xg15 7y ago
I fear the effects of this are amplified by the current unfortunate trend of using dark pattern and strategic use of friction to steer the user into desired directions. Congrats, your gray-on-white "decline" button that looks like a link is probably annoying for young and able-bodied users but it may be a serious obstacle for the others.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I like his criticism of difficulty in iPhone screen navigation, My Dad is 97 and has to carry a tiny pointing device to get full use from his phone. He is much better using his iPad, but neither small device is natural for him like using his Mac Desktop Pro or his iMac. When using his computers, the full size keyboards and wireless mice work really well for him. Norman’s suggestions for iPhone navigation would help my Dad a lot.
ken 7y ago
As usual, design is mostly universal. Besides issues of strength, there's actually not much here which is specific to age. These are design issues for all. > Loud restaurants are torture. So, more and more, my wife and I select restaurants by their noise level rather than by their food quality. At home while watching TV, whether shows, streaming events, or movies, we always turn on the captions, which often block critical parts of the image. Even worse, when a film shows someone speaking in a foreign language, the film often translates the words, but so too does the closed captioning, and the two are placed on top of one another, making both attempts to help the viewer completely unhelpful. I'm (only) in my 30's and every one of these applies to me and my friends, as well.
- gliop 7y ago
  Loud restaurants do that intentionally to scare off old unsexy people and to make customers leave sooner for faster turnaround. Netflix does captioning very well.
imgabe 7y ago
> Even worse, when a film shows someone speaking in a foreign language, the film often translates the words, but so too does the closed captioning, and the two are placed on top of one another, making both attempts to help the viewer completely unhelpful. This drives me nuts. Especially when the closed captioning blocks the film's translation with something completely unhelpful like (speaking foreign language) Why even bother putting that in there?
nikanj 7y ago
Ironically the usability blog pops countless cookie consent dialogs to distract the reader
jungletime 7y ago
A glaring example of this is the Canada Revenue Agency. It asks 5 different security questions, you need to type in the answer to, before you can set up account. The problems I observed my elderly father having is: 1) The website times out way too soon. Before my father could type up three answers it timed out. Each time he has to start from scratch. 2) An answer to security a question, like "who was your first teacher" Can have many variations. Did he type in first and last name? Was the first name before the last name or the last name before the first name? Did he capitalize the letters? Did he spell the name correctly, its been many years. Did he make any typos.
- fiblye 7y ago
  I'm not even old and I hate security questions like this. I'll never forget the name of my best friend in 2nd grade, but I will forget whether I input his name as Billy Bob, Billy, William, William Robert, etc.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I'd say in a typical list of security questions I would consistently answer maybe a third of them (and those are mostly ones that a determined scammer could find the answers to). And that's assuming that the service is forgiving in terms of abbreviations, spelling variants, the presence of words like Road, etc. The worst I saw recently was a mandatory security question about "What was the first city you visited?" The answer was multiple choice with about 6 city names.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  The CRA website has had bad problems that go way beyond accessibility. I've experienced inscrutable instructions, pages that contradict each other, and security procedures that get stuck in infinite loops.
everdrive 7y ago
There are some places where this is going well, such as the firefox reading pane. Nearly every article can be switched to the pane, and you can choose the font size and readability. (Sepia is high contrast, but easy on the eyes.) I'm glad this is being brought up, and I love the tone of article, too. What's merely annoying for me right now (I'm in my mid-30s) will be untenable when I'm 65. Design can be better. The other alternative, of course, is to opt out of some of this technology. iPhones aren't great for the elderly? Well, dumbphones are making a small comeback and are much easier to use.
black6 7y ago
> As a result, even a manual is not enough: all the arbitrary gestures that control tablets, phones, and computers have to be memorized. Everything has to be memorized. If they’re documented at all. I only discovered the difference in iOS between a “long press” and “hard press” on the touchscreen by accident. The extra useability thrilled me, but I wish the feature were better documented.
a3n 7y ago
Well, they're old. They're difficult and boring to talk to. Besides, they aren't going to buy enough of our stuff now or in the future. They aren't the long-term loyal customers we're trying to cultivate, because they're - ahem - old.
crehn 7y ago
I'm hoping one of the big tech companies will invest into creating an inclusive design language that is accessible, functional and sexy from the get-go.
codedokode 7y ago
Hacker News has room for improving too. While I have normal eyesight, I have to zoom up this page because the letters are too small.

Case in point. This article does not display when cookies are disabled.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Irony is my favorite form of humor. This is how the article shows up for me: https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs

js2 7y ago
That’s horrible. Let me recommend 1BlockerX: https://ibb.co/yNQ4T08 https://ibb.co/yNQ4T08 Or use Safari reader mode. Or both.
- recursive 7y ago
  Using an add-on to get a usable experience is nearly the same as admitting defeat.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's also a necessity. Beyond uBlock Origin for the abusive parts, I've also recently started to use Stylus to fix bad design of sites I visit frequently. Few minutes with browser's Inspector and I can usually whip up a little bit of CSS that removes unnecessary whitespace, UI trinkets, and densifies the site by factor of 2 to 5.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      I've been doing that Stylus thing for years.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  I wouldn’t recommend 1Blocker. I had it and was disappointed at how they rarely (if ever?) update their filter lists (they’re also not using the standard lists like EasyList). AdGuard Pro is much better and supports standard lists like EasyList and Fanboy’s lists, along with region-specific lists and DNS-based blocking (so blocks ads/cancer in non-browser contexts too).
  - js2 7y ago
    I’ve been using 1Blocker for a long time since back when there where few choices and it was clearly the best option. I like that it syncs with my desktop and use it with Safari on macOS too. I also like that it’s easy to whitelist sites, that it’s easy to block elements of specific sites, and that it’s an indie app. I think the reason for not using the full EasyList is that Safari limits the number of content blocker rules to 50k, less than can accommodate the full EasyList. I wonder how AGP gets around that. In any case, I rarely see ads with 1Blocker. The one thing it doesn’t block reliably is ad blocker detection, but I’m not sure that’s even possible for a Safari content blocker to do. Looking at the App Store, I see there are a lot of blockers now. How did you decide on AGP over the others?
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      For me the main reason has been EasyList support instead of some kind of home brew list (they’re pretty much always based on EasyList anyway, but with a homebrew list you explicitly rely on the developer updating that list).

eigenspace 7y ago

Thought provoking article. One difficult thing to grapple with here though is that my impression of the elderly is that the bulk of them are living on a tight budget to make sure that their retirement savings last them through their remaining years. Well designed, hip and beautiful products typically come at a hefty premium (think Apple tax). How many elderly people are willing to pay a premium for good, user friendly design? Could it be that the reason we don't see better design for the elderly is because most of them are unwilling or unable to pay extra for it, unlike the young?

mixmastamyk 7y ago
As a group they have much more money than poor college students.
- eigenspace 7y ago
  I think that’s a shallow analysis. The difference is that college students expect to make more money in the future so they don’t put any thought into stretching their dollar. Retirees are the opposite. They may have bigger bank accounts, but for most of them, they know that’s all they’ll ever get.
  - gliop 7y ago
    My neighbor is a widower schoolteacher who gets discounts on things including property taxes on her mansion because of that, despite being multimillionaire by marit inheritance and receiving social security benefits young people can only dream of (and no college loan debt, of course). The "fixed income" cry is just a ploy old people use to get discounts.
    - sctb 7y ago
      When we talk about substantiveness, what we mean is that we want commenters to post information that has a reasonable trail back to our shared reality (another commenter here sometimes uses the phrase “connect the dots”). Anecdotes can be interesting and valuable, but they don't form a basis for such broad claims as you've made. So if you want to share an anecdote just share the anecdote, and if you want to make a claim please back it up with substantial evidence—and do so with consideration. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ssivark 7y ago

I speculate whether this observation indicates that most of the chatter around "design" is signaling focused on appearing hip/trendy -- largely a branding effort overlaid on top of company goals, rather than an effort to think through actual user needs from the ground up. That would explain why so much of the focus is on fads.

eswat 7y ago
I sometimes wonder if the branding effort I’ve seen over the past few years is even overlaid company goals. A lot of it seems to be designers signaling to other designers. Like Dribbble has expanded across the web and product landing pages are now the shots.
btown 7y ago
There is a hive mind of designers, but one must follow this hive mind to remain relevant. It is actually the case that skeuomorphic design, all the rage less than a decade ago, would be a turnoff to users today. Now, could this be because people associate good design with successful new products, and those new products have happened to use a different UI mentality for no other reason than signaling to a design-minded minority? Perhaps. But those new products do indeed exist, and they have truly moved the goalposts. One must follow design trends or perish.
- double0jimb0 7y ago
  Or maybe design is just entertainment. It’s a story that keeps the monkey mind engaged in what is most likely a banal exercise.
asark 7y ago
It's more than that—it's peacock feathers. You do it to signal you have money to burn looking "modern". You'll even see people on HN complain that a site looks "old", sometimes—not bad, just old. Keeping up with trends signals you're doing well enough to keep your site from appearing old, so looking maintained and up-to-date. I think it's related to how chain stores & restaurants look so much more polished these days, and completely re-design their logo and colors (repainting whole buildings) every few years. They didn't used to do that, and everything generally looked a lot less "slick" than it does now. All I can figure is a couple of them started doing it to differentiate themselves from smaller chains and mom-n-pop stores (that couldn't afford that crap) and the rest started doing it so they didn't look left behind. Such a waste.

RyJones 7y ago

I characterize this as "all PMs have perfect eyes and skin". The first iteration of the Microsoft Surface featured a micro SD slot that was unusable if you had anything less than perfect, pliable finger nails. I cracked a nail so many times using that slot I gave up. Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts.

gumby 7y ago
“You’re looking at it wrong.”
- RyJones 7y ago
  I returned a set of airpods. We both struggled to get the serial number of those things
tzs 7y ago
> Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts Tip: take a photo and view it in the photo app on your phone or desktop. It is often much easier to read then. If it is not, it can often be made so by playing with the editing options. This also often works with things like power bricks that sometimes have the specs "printed" in raised plastic with no coloring to distinguish it from the rest of the case.
- m463 7y ago
  I set triple-click on my iphone to magnifier. Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Magnifier -> On Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Magnifier (of course those settings are somewhat inaccessi... well you know...)
  - EricE 7y ago
    This - should be a card in the box on top of the iPhone explaining magnifier. So incredibly useful!

areoform 7y ago

Thoughtless design is everywhere. My company uses Discord for comms and I’m active in several Discord communities, but my vision impaired co-worker isn’t. Not because of a lack of want, but because Discord has been coasting on accessible design for years. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/4tn00z/when_will_discord_be_accessible_to_those_who_use/ https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/4tn00z/when_wil... Everything takes more resources than we expect, but surely a theme for their client (we do have some proof that it is theme-able) that is friendlier for screen readers shouldn’t take more time than an entire games store? For me, the big takeaway from this article and companies like Discord is that people just don’t seem to care. And that’s often the status quo until an Apple comes along. We forget this, but back before the resurgence of Apple design was an afterthought, not a forethought even though there were obvious gains to be had and a better future to lead towards. But the vast majority of companies avoided the obvious win until Apple’s stock price shocked them into caring. A significant fraction of everyone’s user base (including the core users) would benefit from accessible and thoughtful design, because like the article says, we’re all disabled sometimes. Now, we just need to figure out which company will have to show the world how to do it.

save_ferris 7y ago
The dismal accessibility adoption on the web is horrendous, but working for a company that has to deliver accessible web apps to comply with Federal law has really opened my eyes to how terrible to ecosystem of accessibility is. My team spends about a quarter of our time working strictly on accessibility, and we find ourselves straying from the beaten path often in order to accommodate a specific screenreader/OS combo. We run into situations all the time where we're unable to get insight from the docs because something is buried deep in the spec. We also have to draw a line in the sand about which screenreaders to support and which ones to pass on, which pisses off clients that use screenreaders that we don't support. Automated accessibility audit results sometimes contradict documentation around best practices, which can be frustrating. The other thing I've learned is that developers usually hate working on accessibility issues because the screenreaders are much less intuitive to use and can really muck up your workflow if you're trying to ensure that an interface is completely accessible. While I agree that we as a community can do better, I think that web accessibility in its current form is largely a failure because people see it as a cost that they're not interested in incurring, possibly because of the issues I've listed above.

louprado 7y ago

Regarding a comment the author made in passing: For the increasing number of people who have cataract surgery, the eye’s lenses have ben replaced with plastic, which usually have a fixed focus. (Artificial lenses that can be focused are under development.) My dad recently had cataract surgery and I just assumed he was getting would be a deformable lens that would give him the ability to focus again. Does anyone know why it is so hard to develop such a lens ? As far as medical breakthroughs it seems like low hanging fruit and most people over the age of 45 could benefit from such a surgery since that is the age at which our lenses begin to harden and can no longer be shaped by our ciliary muscles.

all2 7y ago
> Does anyone know why it is so hard to develop such a lens ? As far as medical breakthroughs it seems like low hanging fruit ... Not in medicine or medical research, so great grains of salt required. 1) immune rejection 2) non-degradable 3) same modulus of elasticity as a biological lens (and maintains elasticity) 4) (relatively) cheap source materials 5) (relatively) cheap manufacture 6) survive all testing; up to FDA approval Can anyone in medicine comment on this?
- beautifulfreak 7y ago
  There's a relevant article on the HN front page now. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-cornea/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-corn...
  - fhars 7y ago
    No, that‘s about cornea replacements and is irrelevant for the current discussion.
fhars 7y ago
The lens is suspended by a ring of fibres about 1-2μm thick from the ciliar muscle. Getting accommodation to work with a synthetic lens would require a substitute suspension mechanism to attach the lens to the muscle. And it would probably be useful if it could be implanted without temporarily removing the front or the eye including the iris. Compare that to a small cut to the side of the eye to extract the old lens and inject a new one that is held in place mechanically.

mirimir 7y ago

Strap wrenches are great for jar lids. I sometimes use two. One for the jar, and one for the lid.

sn41 7y ago

I'm a technology enthusiast in my 40s. Even I lose my patience, to say nothing of people of my parents' generation, when I try to travel to a new country which has a different set of showers, cooking ranges and washing machines/dryers. To say nothing of older people I've seen on flights who struggle to turn on their entertainment consoles. Turning on a device should not be a puzzle-solving exercise. As Alan Kay said, "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible." Too often, the user interfaces make complex things doable, and simple things possible, with great effort. (Also I don't know if this is a thing in design methodologies : I prefer if designers avoid having basic functionalities as a result of a sequence of steps, rather, I like to have them as separate top-level buttons)

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Also I don't know if this is a thing in design methodologies : I prefer if designers avoid having basic functionalities as a result of a sequence of steps, rather, I like to have them as separate top-level buttons It is if you care about ergonomics - the rule is, the more frequent an action, the less key/mouse/fingerpresses it should take to invoke. It is not if you only care to make it look pretty, good for the demo or to encite first-time users to subscribe to your SaaS.

geuszb 7y ago

My theory on this is that it is easier for designers to empathize with users who are the same age or younger, since in these situations they've had the experience of the user's age, whereas very few designers have had the experience of being old (save for the author of TFA).

aasasd 7y ago
Absolutely, it's that plus the fact that young designers and programmers crank out much more output. And they're cheap. Myopia and hand aches give excellent perspective on the problems of accessibility in UI design. Alas, they also tend to limit my time with the machine and productivity in that time. It's about the same how Reddit users' average age is purportedly twenty-something but the content and comments are dominated by teenagers. Teens just post way more. Ultimately, accessibility for the elderly is a typical case where one has to invest additional effort by choice and principle. I.e. not gonna happen under just the market forces.
- gliop 7y ago
  More output means more bugs.
gav 7y ago
It's hard to empathize with abstract people, you need to observe and engage actual people in their environment, which costs time and money. Too often people are stuck in a conference room talking about personas. I've ended up frustrated at clients telling them "you are not your customers" endless times. It's amazing how much you learn getting out and talking to customers. One of my favorite examples is for a company that sold plumbing supplies to contractors. The biggest feedback was that these guys spent most of the day in a truck and needed to be able to place orders on their phones and they begged the team to make sure that all the buttons (and links) were much bigger so that their fat fingers could click on them: "this was designed by a pianist". There's so many examples of interactions that show that the designer didn't understand what the end user is really trying to do. My bank makes me enter a first and last name for transfer recipients, but only use the last name on the confirmation step, however the bulk of my transfers are to family members!

nilram 7y ago

My partner's mom, age 94, got new hearing aids and the app that can control them (adjust focus on front/side/back, high/low/midrange, etc), runs only on iOS. We got her an iPad mini and I set it up so she can (A) read the Washington Post, (B) read a poetry app, (C) control her hearing aids, and (D) not much else (so as not to be confusing). Much to my surprise, the hearing aid app does not adjust it's font size per the iOS system settings, and it does not have any font adjustment of it's own. It also has a background picture that interferes with focusing on controls. I'm boggled that a company producing a product for those with hearing-impairment doesn't recognize that many of it's users may be in age-related decline, and that can include vision and cognitive impairment.

aasasd 7y ago
Maybe Apple could hint to the app vendor that they should support the system feature? I'd probably contact the app authors themselves first, though. It might happen that the issue is resolved quickly with no confrontation.
- nilram 7y ago
  I’ll be making my suggestions to the hearing aid company who sells the devices and the app. If there is any response at all, I expect it will be congenial. However, I doubt it will be resolved quickly since even non-invasive medical devices like hearing aids have rigorous and time-consuming reviews.
wereHamster 7y ago
Most likely the app was written by a third-party contractor who didn't know much about who the users are, they only received the requirements (app must do X and Y) and delivered.
- nilram 7y ago
  Absolutely. That’s why I’ll be contacting the hearing aid company, who is ultimately responsible for those requirements.

EricE 7y ago

The trend towards lack of physical controls in cars is absolutely bonkers. I'm gobsmacked anyone thinks the Tesla Model 3 is good design. Same with desk phones. Anyone who deals with customers at a counter doesn't have time to constantly look at a touch screen for buttons that may or may not be there. Nothing like chucking muscle memory out the window in the name of aesthetics :p

synaesthesisx 7y ago
Think of it this way - imagine using an iPad/tablet while driving. Now imagine your grandfather using an iPad, while also driving. Unfortunately accessibility & haptics have been pushed to the backburner.
- ngold 7y ago
  Now imagine your grandfather trying to change the radio station on a touchscreen display while driving.
marnett 7y ago
Unfortunately I think it’s more about pricing as oppposed to better design paradigms. Replacing embedded system engineers with cheap java engineers? Yea that requires a screen.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Similar to capacitive touch panels on appliances. You'd think this sci-fi look is more expensive to make, but it's actually cheaper. The "buttons" have no moving parts.
  - tty2300 7y ago
    And should last longer, make it easier to clean and not get gunk stuck in it causing it to jam up.
    - 7y ago

OscarTheGrinch 7y ago

The article makes some good points about not talking down to older people, but here's the thing the article misses: aspiration. Advertisers test all sorts of messaging before they roll out a large campaign, if empowered old people sold units we would already see more of them in ads. Advertising is largely playing on the target audiences emotions, selling them an idealized form of themselves if only they brought X product. Old people dont aspire to be old. They are, for the most part, quite happy to buy products fronted by younger people who remind them of their younger selves. So the missing grey dollar goldrush this article bemones is largely already being served, and its worth considering that most ads must simultaneously reach multiple demographics, would you aspire to drink old lady coke? Advertisers are not stupid.

SyneRyder 7y ago
The Coke ads currently in Australia (and apparently from the UK) feature an elderly man trying a Coke No Sugar for the first time, who then goes on to ask "What else haven't I tried?" and tick off a bucket list while Queen's "I Want To Break Free" plays in the background. There's absolutely ways to do it if you want to. https://youtu.be/O223tQkCuag https://youtu.be/O223tQkCuag

rwmj 7y ago

Don Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic and very relevant today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Everyday-Things-MIT-Press/dp/0262525674/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Everyday-Things-MIT-Press/dp...

stevenwoo 7y ago
I've read this book three or four times and it's kind of crazy he was at Apple as an executive and had no lasting impact, iOS is now full of hidden gestures/features with low discoverability/intuitiveness. Nobody there with the power to make decisions agrees with the basic premise of this book.
- ghaff 7y ago
  On the other hand, Donald Norman also came to embrace (and somewhat found) the idea of User Experience design. He pretty much admitted that his earlier focus on design was too narrow. And I'd argue that Apple very much likewise broadened their focus to the entire user experience.

simion314 7y ago

An issue I hit yesterday, I installed Chromium and I went in the Settings to disable the Google auto login, it did not work for me and I was very frustrated. After a few attempts I noticed that when you change the setting a small notification appears on the lower corner of the screen that I need to restart the program. Maybe that kind of notification is cool and slick (I don't think it is) but it is easy to miss for people like me with mad eyes (not sure if normal eyes can catch the notification if you are focusing on other corner of the screen)

Causality1 7y ago

For some reason companies hate text now. Instead of a menu, you get icons with as minimalistic a design and as little difference between them as possible. Entering your user name and password is two separate pages for some reason now. Window borders have disappeared so instead of knowing at a glance where you can click and drag you have to closely watch your mouse pointer change. A big "Hewwo 2 U!" screen is added between turning your computer on and being able to enter your password as if you foolishly left your desktop in your jeans pocket and Windows wants to make sure you're not pocket-PowerPointing. It's like they're trying to alienate everyone not intimately familiar with the system and appeal to the lowest common denominator at the same time.

__alias 7y ago
I for one like the material minimalistic menu items we get now. (Assuming they use standard material design icons) it makes it quickly recognisable and accessible.
- Causality1 7y ago
  If you use them constantly. For example, most of my Gmail use is on an android device, which has a radically different UI than the web mail. When I use the web mail, probably once a month or so, I have to use tool tips every time because I've forgotten which tiny grey on grey button is reply, which is spam, etc.
dictum 7y ago
I don't mean to defend the trend of using undecipherable icons with no text labels, but this is an example of how requirements can clash: internationalization. Sometimes the text label that would fit in English is too long when properly translated to another language. (Icons are problem too: they can be meaningless to an user. However, they have the benefit of a somewhat constrained size, unlike words and phrases.) I personally prefer interfaces that scroll, like web pages, to interfaces with a fixed or partially fixed frame, like mobile apps. A fixed frame works when you can fit it in full in your screen; this was easier on a low-resolution but large display than on a very high resolution 4-6 inch display.

altitudinous 7y ago

I'm 51 and work in tech. I now understand the nuances in this article. I'll probably understand them better as time goes on. Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it. Young readers probably skimmed over the bit about frequency definition, captions etc. Everyone older than 50 gets it. I don't get the bit with walking sticks yet, but I am not there yet. But I realise that. I was young and bulletproof once - even up until 5 years ago I didn't understand what this article was about. I gather by reading the comments here that most don't. The challenge is explaining ageing to anyone under the age of about 45, when it is entirely out of their scope of experience, in a demographic who think they know it all. Ageism is embedded in our society, whose best attempt at inclusion and diversity is based on colour of skin and gender. I don't think it will change, it has probably been the same for thousands of years. I had to go around to a friend of my mothers the other day - in her 70's, her younger relatives had switched off captions on her Samsung TV. She had no idea how to turn them back on. It is hidden about four layers deep in the fu.king menus. Why isn't it a button an on/off button on the remote? Another button amongst the 20 already there? In the manual - It got a paragraph mention about 30 pages in, in a tiny font. So discriminatory. I am seriously thinking of making a career of this, while I still can!!!

Nokinside 7y ago
Fully agree. There is also the 'no bullshit' attitude that starts to emerge when you turn 40. You want product to do a thing. Not to engage you in any way. You either already have a life or you know you will never have one. Many older people have money and they are willing to spend it if does a thing and it's easy to get. If Amazon would buy Paul Graham's old Viaweb code, it would need just little updating to become a tool that generates killer UI's for the aging population in the developing world. Plain html5 with commons sense and good defaults with tiniest amount of javascript is all you need for a well functioning web service. Incidentally Hacker News is not far from this ideal. This is what good news site looks like: http://lite.cnn.com/en http://lite.cnn.com/en
- noir_lord 7y ago
  I was thinking the other day what a good TUI would like on the web (without throwing out baby with the bathwater).

goldenkey 7y ago

Isn't it moreso that old people are daft and impatient? I am nearly 30 and can figure out systems, both new and old, and find that patience and faith is vitally important. I notice my parents don't even bother to explore the menus or dropdowns or well..much of anything, before they demand to be helped. It's gonna be very hard to sell me on menus being ageist. I hope you can read my frustration..

altitudinous 7y ago
I rest my case. You should be asking yourself why, do you see you don't understand their behaviour? Why do they behave differently in menus to you, don't condemn them because they do behave differently to you.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  At the same time, and without condemnation, older people CAN learn to be more playful/exploratory and patient with tech. Yes, tech can and should be designed better. But if there were one or two tips that could be disseminated, to old and young (most youth are not tech savvy, actually): 1. If you can't seem to figure it out, you aren't alone (probably poor design) 2. Willingness to calmly "play around" and explore menus/options/buttons is THE KEY to getting almost anything to work
llamathrowaway 7y ago
If you’re ‘nearly 30’ then it’s likely you grow up with modern gadgets, and since you are on HN there is a higher chance that you have a stronger than average interest in electronics. Your parents did not grow up like you. They grew up in a time when a few knobs is all you need to operate a home appliance. And they are probably more interested in what’s being played on TV, rather than the TV itself. The complexity of today’s electronics and softwares is getting out of control. If you have to actively explore all menus in order to use something normally, then I suspect the UI is poorly designed. But there is no incentive for their designers to improve, unless they acknowledge that their perception of electronics is very different from the average users.

sadness2 7y ago

If you succeed in creating technology that will change the world, you will then have to live in said changed world as an old person.

mrhappyunhappy 7y ago

I’m 33, my car had a touch screen display and the Bluetooth sync function is 3 clicks deep. If I were to start driving right away, it becomes a huge hassle to try to sync to Bluetooth. Doesn’t help that you can access the first 2 screens but the 3rd is locked since I’m driving. It’s as if some engineer somewhere thought the 3rd screen is more distracting than the first 2. I always imagine how easy it would be to have a physical button I can just click any time. Ahh the days of modern design... gotta love it.

xg15 7y ago

I fear the effects of this are amplified by the current unfortunate trend of using dark pattern and strategic use of friction to steer the user into desired directions. Congrats, your gray-on-white "decline" button that looks like a link is probably annoying for young and able-bodied users but it may be a serious obstacle for the others.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I like his criticism of difficulty in iPhone screen navigation, My Dad is 97 and has to carry a tiny pointing device to get full use from his phone. He is much better using his iPad, but neither small device is natural for him like using his Mac Desktop Pro or his iMac. When using his computers, the full size keyboards and wireless mice work really well for him. Norman’s suggestions for iPhone navigation would help my Dad a lot.

ken 7y ago

As usual, design is mostly universal. Besides issues of strength, there's actually not much here which is specific to age. These are design issues for all. > Loud restaurants are torture. So, more and more, my wife and I select restaurants by their noise level rather than by their food quality. At home while watching TV, whether shows, streaming events, or movies, we always turn on the captions, which often block critical parts of the image. Even worse, when a film shows someone speaking in a foreign language, the film often translates the words, but so too does the closed captioning, and the two are placed on top of one another, making both attempts to help the viewer completely unhelpful. I'm (only) in my 30's and every one of these applies to me and my friends, as well.

gliop 7y ago
Loud restaurants do that intentionally to scare off old unsexy people and to make customers leave sooner for faster turnaround. Netflix does captioning very well.

imgabe 7y ago

> Even worse, when a film shows someone speaking in a foreign language, the film often translates the words, but so too does the closed captioning, and the two are placed on top of one another, making both attempts to help the viewer completely unhelpful. This drives me nuts. Especially when the closed captioning blocks the film's translation with something completely unhelpful like (speaking foreign language) Why even bother putting that in there?

nikanj 7y ago

Ironically the usability blog pops countless cookie consent dialogs to distract the reader

jungletime 7y ago

A glaring example of this is the Canada Revenue Agency. It asks 5 different security questions, you need to type in the answer to, before you can set up account. The problems I observed my elderly father having is: 1) The website times out way too soon. Before my father could type up three answers it timed out. Each time he has to start from scratch. 2) An answer to security a question, like "who was your first teacher" Can have many variations. Did he type in first and last name? Was the first name before the last name or the last name before the first name? Did he capitalize the letters? Did he spell the name correctly, its been many years. Did he make any typos.

fiblye 7y ago
I'm not even old and I hate security questions like this. I'll never forget the name of my best friend in 2nd grade, but I will forget whether I input his name as Billy Bob, Billy, William, William Robert, etc.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'd say in a typical list of security questions I would consistently answer maybe a third of them (and those are mostly ones that a determined scammer could find the answers to). And that's assuming that the service is forgiving in terms of abbreviations, spelling variants, the presence of words like Road, etc. The worst I saw recently was a mandatory security question about "What was the first city you visited?" The answer was multiple choice with about 6 city names.
jessriedel 7y ago
The CRA website has had bad problems that go way beyond accessibility. I've experienced inscrutable instructions, pages that contradict each other, and security procedures that get stuck in infinite loops.

everdrive 7y ago

There are some places where this is going well, such as the firefox reading pane. Nearly every article can be switched to the pane, and you can choose the font size and readability. (Sepia is high contrast, but easy on the eyes.) I'm glad this is being brought up, and I love the tone of article, too. What's merely annoying for me right now (I'm in my mid-30s) will be untenable when I'm 65. Design can be better. The other alternative, of course, is to opt out of some of this technology. iPhones aren't great for the elderly? Well, dumbphones are making a small comeback and are much easier to use.

black6 7y ago

> As a result, even a manual is not enough: all the arbitrary gestures that control tablets, phones, and computers have to be memorized. Everything has to be memorized. If they’re documented at all. I only discovered the difference in iOS between a “long press” and “hard press” on the touchscreen by accident. The extra useability thrilled me, but I wish the feature were better documented.

a3n 7y ago

Well, they're old. They're difficult and boring to talk to. Besides, they aren't going to buy enough of our stuff now or in the future. They aren't the long-term loyal customers we're trying to cultivate, because they're - ahem - old.

crehn 7y ago

I'm hoping one of the big tech companies will invest into creating an inclusive design language that is accessible, functional and sexy from the get-go.

codedokode 7y ago

Hacker News has room for improving too. While I have normal eyesight, I have to zoom up this page because the letters are too small.