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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

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

devwastaken wrote: post #24
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 se…

See also Slack C&D-ing an extension doing UX fixes in the browser:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17869249

I really dislike SaaS vendors who are being control freaks. My browser, my rules. That was always the fundamental design of the Web.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

sn41 wrote: post #27

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,…

> 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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

recursive wrote: post #8
js2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s horrible. Let me recommend 1BlockerX: https://ibb.co/yNQ4T08 Or use Safari reader mode. Or both.

Using an add-on to get a usable experience is nearly the same as admitting defeat.

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#54

Post by tty2300 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50
marnett wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And should last longer, make it easier to clean and not get gunk stuck in it causing it to jam up.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#55

Post by gav »

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).

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!

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#56

Post by aasasd »

nilram wrote: post #29

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 t…

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#57

Post by __alias »

Causality1 wrote: post #49

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 be…

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.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#58

Post by kristopolous »

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.

It's just a physical interaction layer though. Is there a market for designing this interface in software graphically, getting the code working, then sending the emulated interface off to get physical copies shipped.

It comes as a device with a usb connector. You plug it in and it works just like the software emulation but as a physical object.

No EE or embedded people required. A cheap software person could do this

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#59

Post by JCharante »

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

> 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

Is this so? I used to work at a Dunkin Donuts, and the POS / register was entirely touchscreen, and I and everyone else developed muscle memory.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#60

Post by raverbashing »

tty2300 wrote: post #54
TeMPOraL wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And should last longer, make it easier to clean and not get gunk stuck in it causing it to jam up.

Yes, that's the big selling point. And I agree for somme appliances it is great.
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