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I feel like someone should try to start from scratch and design a phone interface that any elderly person would be perfectly comfortable using and understanding

I feel like someone should try to start from scratch and design a phone interface that any elderly person would be perfectly comfortable using and understanding. And then sell it to the rest of us as well.

slantyyz 6y ago
I can't emphasize how much this needs to be done (granted, the population in the age group that needs it the most is shrinking). The current seniors phone are utter crap. I've tried a bunch for my dad. My dad, 80+, can't figure out how to use a feature phone (I got him a Nokia handset) much less a smartphone (have tried iPhone and Android). The thing is, he has no desire to read a menu, or figure out what an icon means, or what the text under the icon says. He can't even be bothered trying to understand up, down, left, right and OK in terms of navigating a phone's capabilities. What he does know how to use is a land line. He's got a Northern Telecom phone with some pre-programmed numbers, and he seems to have no problem with that at all. He doesn't know how to do voice mail on his phone, but he does know how to use an old school answering machine. If someone can make a phone that behaves more like a traditional phone (i.e., maybe a lid flips so that it's like lifting a phone off the hook, close the lid to hang up), and no send/cancel buttons, I think my dad would be able to figure it out more easily. On a separate note, the reasons above are the same reasons why he can't use a media player on a TV. He only knows the concept of sticking physical media into a player, and using the standard media buttons, and for the TV, he is used to punching in numbers to change the channel. Menu navigation, which is easy for most people under 60, is SO foreign to him.
freeflight 6y ago
That interface already exists, even those elderly people will mostly understand a phone with physical buttons and a numerical pad. But once you remove the physical buttons everything becomes much less intuitive and hinges way more on proper UI design in addition to making a lot of assumptions about a users knowledge on touch controls.

slantyyz 6y ago

I can't emphasize how much this needs to be done (granted, the population in the age group that needs it the most is shrinking). The current seniors phone are utter crap. I've tried a bunch for my dad. My dad, 80+, can't figure out how to use a feature phone (I got him a Nokia handset) much less a smartphone (have tried iPhone and Android). The thing is, he has no desire to read a menu, or figure out what an icon means, or what the text under the icon says. He can't even be bothered trying to understand up, down, left, right and OK in terms of navigating a phone's capabilities. What he does know how to use is a land line. He's got a Northern Telecom phone with some pre-programmed numbers, and he seems to have no problem with that at all. He doesn't know how to do voice mail on his phone, but he does know how to use an old school answering machine. If someone can make a phone that behaves more like a traditional phone (i.e., maybe a lid flips so that it's like lifting a phone off the hook, close the lid to hang up), and no send/cancel buttons, I think my dad would be able to figure it out more easily. On a separate note, the reasons above are the same reasons why he can't use a media player on a TV. He only knows the concept of sticking physical media into a player, and using the standard media buttons, and for the TV, he is used to punching in numbers to change the channel. Menu navigation, which is easy for most people under 60, is SO foreign to him.

freeflight 6y ago

That interface already exists, even those elderly people will mostly understand a phone with physical buttons and a numerical pad. But once you remove the physical buttons everything becomes much less intuitive and hinges way more on proper UI design in addition to making a lot of assumptions about a users knowledge on touch controls.