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Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

whatusersdo.com

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Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#101

Post by Animats »

Today's really broken web site - Bank of America online banking. I'm running Firefox 53 (latest version), with Ghostery and Privacy Badger, on Ubuntu Linux. BofA's site had worked well for years. Then they added some new features. Not good ones.

BofA's site now complains I'm using an "unsupported browser", even though they claim to support Firefox. About half the time, login just hangs. Refreshing the page shows a logged-in state.

When transferring funds from one account to another, sometimes the transfer process hangs. The "Approve transfer" button darkens, but the page is not refreshed. Sometimes the transfer has taken place, and sometimes it hasn't.

Yesterday, I did a transfer between accounts, and reached this situation. I looked at the account status and didn't see the outgoing transfer listed. So I re-did the transfer, and then saw the outgoing transfer listed. I printed the account transaction history.

Today I get a warning that an account is overdrawn. Checking account status, I find that there are now two identical transfers between the accounts, resulting in one being overdrawn and the other being overpaid. An hour of phone calls, mostly on hold, was required to fix this mess.

BofA's web site is using TouchCommerce ("Engage with your customers the way they want to engage") Adobe Audience Manager ("Build audience profiles that you can use anywhere"), and Tealium ("a single approach to connecting data across teams, vendors, and touchpoints in real time"). They've added ads for "special offers". They use these even on live transaction pages, which is a possible security flaw. Code from those sources produces huge numbers of browser errors (the obsolete "star property hack" for IE6 causes many of them) indicating sloppy code.

Sigh. May be time to change banks.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#102

Post by tomcam »

boomlinde wrote: post #30

As sort of a sidenote: websites about UX seem to have the worst UX. Clicking the link, I'm not only met by a social sharing bar that uses 1/6th of the screen and screws scrolling up (because for some reason it should follow through my scrolling but somehow only be visible when scrolling upwards), but a faux-chat window overlaying the content where a Tom is asking me how he can help me. Not at all, thank you. At least…

https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/8gBS9/http://whatusersdo.com/bl...

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#103

Post by unexistance »

vogt wrote: post #71
cgriswald wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally know nothing about UX, but I have to say a visit to UXPin's website instantly turned me off. First, they put this great big demand for my email front and center when I barely even know what their site is (and a single line explaining it is not enough to get me to sign up). The entire website is covered over with "modal grey" with no X box or anything else showing me I can close it, just some links at the…

Yeah, the product isn't great. To the point about UX blogs though, theirs is pretty solid https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/ . It isn't bogged down by social sharing widgets, scroll jacking, or pop ups (last I checked)

besides the floating header that eats-up my precious vertical screen real-estate, the blog content seems great...

thanks for the link

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#104

Post by linkregister »

a3n wrote: post #52
ASalazarMX wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have a bias for full-width sites and browsers. Ah, of course. He's using it wrong!

No, not at all. If he doesn't like it, then he doesn't like it, I can't disagree with that at all. My point is that the page builders consciously thought of this part, and came up with a reasonable and accommodating design, which I (a narrow-width user) only noticed because of the comment.

I'm pretty sure the parent poster was joking.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#105

Post by makecheck »

Accessible site design is the default state! It is only ruined by what "designers" (pointlessly) add to pages. The "how", therefore, is easy: stop screwing with things.

Nobody asked your site to mess with my preferred font sizes or colors. Nobody asked you to break or poorly reinvent the standard system controls, especially since (at least on Macs) normal controls have strong accessibility support built in.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#106

Post by my_first_acct »

fastball wrote: post #44
chiph wrote: post #2

"Congratulations, here's your first set of glasses" - the present I got when I turned 50. While the site focuses on seniors, a lot of the suggestions are good ones in any case - fonts larger than legalese and with good contrast will make your page more easily approachable and less likely to lose viewers who get frustrated because they can't read what you're trying to say.

Honestly, I've worn glasses all my life, and it's never occurred to me that, when I'm not wearing my glasses, the websites are the one's at fault for not making themselves more readable. I think "web developers should make things more readable" is addressing the symptom and not the problem. The solution is simple when it comes to readability: wear corrective lenses.

As you get older, a few things happen.

First, as your eyes lose the ability to focus (which is a gradual process, not a step change), you find that over time you need more and more lenses: one for objects at 18 inches (your laptop), one for objects at 24 inches (your monitor), etc. You don't always have the proper lenses at hand when you need them.

Second, all the transparent bits of the eyes slowly become less transparent with time. Some problems (cataracts for instance) can be fixed with surgery; others would require replacing the entire eyeball.

Third, a number of unlucky people develop problems with their retinas, which may or may not be fixable, and the fixes rarely leave the retina in as good a shape as it was when it was younger.

So "wear corrective lenses" is not a bad suggestion, but if web designers are targeting older people, they need to assume the the reader's eyes are not what they once were, and that there may not be much that the reader can do about it.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#107

Post by my_first_acct »

ryanar wrote: post #27

The article focuses on over 55s who have money to spend online. I liked the part that spoke to how 40 year olds and up are less likely to explore a website and more likely to abandon a task. I run into this a lot when I watch how my older users interact with our site. They act like they are about to hit the nuke button when performing some actions on the site, and I am sitting there thinking it is totally fine, even…

Some sites have "don't be scared" text, which some users might actually read. For instance: "Once you push this button, you will have another chance to review your order before it is submitted". Or when appropriate, a "be scared" warning: "Once you push this button, your order will be submitted, and it cannot be cancelled".

If you are targeting older users, keep in mind that many of them are accustomed to reading text, and would prefer a couple of explanatory sentences to a semi-mysterious icon.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#108

Post by vogt »

tmaly wrote: post #97
vogt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a UX designer I have seen a lot of this stuff over the years and I always find it funny. DesignerNews.com, which is an imitation of this site, is chock full of articles like this. The big thing to understand is a lot of people in The Blogosphere(TM) who post articles about UX don't really give a rip about anything other than the pageviews whether it's for ad revenue, establishing themselves as a thought leader, or…

Have you ever considered putting together a newsletter of the weekly best posts across all that you follow? I would definitely subscribe.

I actually did exactly this for a while and gave up on it. I had about ~150 subscribers after 12 weeks. Here is a sample:

http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8...

It took a lot more effort/diligence than I had figured it would to keep all the links straight and add what I thought was helpful narrative context. I wasn't having much fun or seeing a whole lot of support, so I stopped.

Re: Generation UX – How to make websites age-friendly

#110

Post by mirimir »

Semiapies wrote: post #64
mirimir wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a couple of the images leave me wondering. The walk with orange and black walls? The iPad, keyboard, mouse and pen? And no alt text? Strange.

It's the idea that random themed images will increase your engagement. No faith in the content.

That didn't work for me. I was left with "WTF?". And wondering whether I'm too old to get some joke. Or maybe just not British ;)
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