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Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

fastcompany.com

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Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#21

Post by PorterDuff »

eigenspace wrote: post #4

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 friendl…

I don't think it's an affordability thing so much as perceived value. People will probably fixate on the products that they wanted at some impressionable age. It's a lot easier for me (being an old guy) to buy expensive stereo equipment even now than it would be to buy a $1000 cell phone.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#23

Post by PorterDuff »

RyJones wrote: post #9

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.

The small fonts are a good point (so to speak). It can be hard to distinguish some letters from numbers, etc. on something like a Windows ID licensing code. Don't get me started on micro USB connectors...always with non-contrasting colors of course. God only knows how an elderly person deals with their CAPTCHA test o' the day.

My highly developed sense of old fartdom really comes out when dealing with modern cars with touchscreen displays.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#24

Post by devwastaken »

areoform wrote: post #10

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_wil... Everything takes more resources than we expect, but surely a theme for their client (we do have some…

Yep, back in the day when BetterDiscord was a thing we'd be making CSS and some JS to change font sizes, change the color of icons for colorblindness IIRC, things like that. Discord's staff continually acted in bad faith about it, to the point of spreading outright lies about the program being malware. Was a big post going around all the public discords, few ever just popped into the betterdiscord server to simply see how that wasn't true. Also when the server got big enough Discord refused to allow more users, so it was continually broken to everyone. Crazy how wanting to change the chat background into doritos and help people was such an evil threat to them.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#25

Post by beautifulfreak »

all2 wrote: post #19
louprado wrote: post #14

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…

> 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…

There's a relevant article on the HN front page now. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-gore-artificial-corn...

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#26

Post by eigenspace »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18
eigenspace wrote: post #4

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 friendl…

As a group they have much more money than poor college students.

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#27

Post by sn41 »

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)

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#28

Post by geuszb »

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).

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#29

Post by nilram »

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#30

Post by [deleted] »

RyJones wrote: post #9

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.

[deleted]
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