Don Norman on how design fails older consumers • Hacker News Board

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#91

Post by detaro » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

gliop wrote: post #89

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All Slack wanted was to C&D was trademark infringement. > UPDATE Sept 14th 2018: After talks with folks from Slack and a rename… Refined (fka Taut) (fka BetterSlack) is now live back

If you read the original C&D they clearly did not just want to stop use of the trademark (or if they did, they certainly claimed otherwise, and got the extension should down vs renamed). It's nice that they could be convinced otherwise, but they clearly complained about the nature of the extension, not just the name.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#92

Post by jungletime » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

A glaring example of this is the Canada Revenue Agency. It asks 5 different security questions, you need to type in the answer to, before you can set up account.

The problems I observed my elderly father having is:

1) The website times out way too soon. Before my father could type up three answers it timed out. Each time he has to start from scratch.

2) An answer to security a question, like "who was your first teacher" Can have many variations.

Did he type in first and last name? Was the first name before the last name or the last name before the first name? Did he capitalize the letters? Did he spell the name correctly, its been many years. Did he make any typos.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#93

Post by gliop » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

eigenspace wrote: post #26

mixmastamyk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My neighbor is a widower schoolteacher who gets discounts on things including property taxes on her mansion because of that, despite being multimillionaire by marit inheritance and receiving social security benefits young people can only dream of (and no college loan debt, of course). The "fixed income" cry is just a ploy old people use to get discounts.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#94

Post by gliop » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

gav wrote: post #55

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…

Personas are a massive improvement over designing for yourself or worse designing for what's fun to design.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#95

Post by gliop » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #45

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 dom…

More output means more bugs.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#96

Post by fiblye » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

jungletime wrote: post #92

A glaring example of this is the Canada Revenue Agency. It asks 5 different security questions, you need to type in the answer to, before you can set up account. The problems I observed my elderly father having is: 1) The website times out way too soon. Before my father could type up three answers it timed out. Each time he has to start from scratch. 2) An answer to security a question, like "who was your first teach…

I'm not even old and I hate security questions like this. I'll never forget the name of my best friend in 2nd grade, but I will forget whether I input his name as Billy Bob, Billy, William, William Robert, etc.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#97

Post by stevenwoo » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #42

Don Norman's book "The Design of Everyday Things" is a classic and very relevant today: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-Everyday-Things-MIT-Press/dp...

I've read this book three or four times and it's kind of crazy he was at Apple as an executive and had no lasting impact, iOS is now full of hidden gestures/features with low discoverability/intuitiveness. Nobody there with the power to make decisions agrees with the basic premise of this book.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#98

Post by Moru » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

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.

And make the driver look at a screen to adjust temperature / fan or whatever.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#99

Post by ghaff » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

Nokinside wrote: post #71

altitudinous wrote: post #61

I'm 51 and work in tech. I now understand the nuances in this article. I'll probably understand them better as time goes on. Young readers probably skimmed over the bits about floaters in the eyes. Everyone older than 50 gets it. Young readers probably skimmed over the bit about frequency definition, captions etc. Everyone older than 50 gets it. I don't get the bit with walking sticks yet, but I am not there yet. But…

Fully agree. There is also the 'no bullshit' attitude that starts to emerge when you turn 40. You want product to do a thing. Not to engage you in any way. You either already have a life or you know you will never have one. Many older people have money and they are willing to spend it if does a thing and it's easy to get. If Amazon would buy Paul Graham's old Viaweb code, it would need just little updating to become…

>You want product to do a thing.

Yup. Sure, I like to tinker with things sometimes.

But I don't, for example, particularly appreciate spending half a day yak shaving with a computer just to get it to the state where I can actually use it for the task I actually set out to do.

About a year ago, I decided I should have a working Windows computer for games and the occasional other Windowsy thing I want to do. My first thought was to upgrade one of my home-built systems. Instead I ended up just buying a big laptop on sale because I more or less to myself that I know how to build computers. But I don't especially want to in this case. I just want a relatively compact computer I can use for some specific tasks.

Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers

#100

Post by everdrive » Sat, May 11, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

There are some places where this is going well, such as the firefox reading pane. Nearly every article can be switched to the pane, and you can choose the font size and readability. (Sepia is high contrast, but easy on the eyes.) I'm glad this is being brought up, and I love the tone of article, too. What's merely annoying for me right now (I'm in my mid-30s) will be untenable when I'm 65. Design can be better.

The other alternative, of course, is to opt out of some of this technology. iPhones aren't great for the elderly? Well, dumbphones are making a small comeback and are much easier to use.