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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

#41

Post by SyneRyder »

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've upvoted this - I made desktop graphics software that I thought would be used by young web designers, but ended up being popular with a 60+ older demographic. (Think along the lines of "scrapbooking".)

They're wonderful people, but there was a lot of pressure to keep prices down because "I'm on a fixed income". That makes it harder to invest more time in design, even though you need to since they're your main market.

(I'm even aware of a couple of elderly 'customers' where "my son gets me all the software for free!", nudge wink torrents.)

Elderly users often require a lot more customer support and hand-holding than a customer in their 30s. Some really enjoy the customer support since for many of them it's one of their few social interactions of the day. Which is fine, but if the product also has to be cheap to meet a fixed income, it's hard to be profitable and have great design and excellent non-rushed non-offshored customer service.

Of course, not all customers are the same. I'm sure there were wealthy & savvy elderly customers too, but I didn't know how many because they never contacted customer support & so I never got to know them personally.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#43

Post by marnett »

EricE wrote: post #33

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

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#44

Post by simion314 »

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)

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#45

Post by aasasd »

geuszb wrote: post #28

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).

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#46

Post by coldcode »

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.

At my employer (very large company) whose product is not an app (but our apps are used by a lot of our customers you don't have to) we do accessibility for our mobile apps and web, but only for sightless people, who rarely if ever use our apps due to the nature of our business. However the number of limited sight people, including older folks and those with visual limitations who can still see, are a large number of our app using customers; sadly we ignore them in design. I too have floaters and have trouble with low contrast text and our app designs are a bit hard to see. In a previous job our designers insisted on medium gray text on light gray backgrounds: I actually upped the contrast in my implementations from what was requested, and no one ever noticed thankfully.

Imagine if Uber did the same, support voiceover for their driver app (like why would a sightless person drive for Uber!) but ignore those with somewhat limited vision or are using the app in a fixed mount while driving, but are otherwise fine with driving vision.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#47

Post by Causality1 »

EricE wrote: post #33

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

I've given up. I use a set of stick-on bluetooth buttons to control everything but the volume in the my current car. I suspect I'll be using them for the volume too in my next car.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#49

Post by Causality1 »

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#50

Post by TeMPOraL »

marnett wrote: post #43
EricE wrote: post #33

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

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.

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.
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