Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
fastcompany.com
Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
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Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#2Case in point. This article does not display when cookies are disabled.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#3Irony is my favorite form of humor. This is how the article shows up for me:
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#4Thought 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 friendly design?
Could it be that the reason we don't see better design for the elderly is because most of them are unwilling or unable to pay extra for it, unlike the young?
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#5I speculate whether this observation indicates that most of the chatter around "design" is signaling focused on appearing hip/trendy -- largely a branding effort overlaid on top of company goals, rather than an effort to think through actual user needs from the ground up. That would explain why so much of the focus is on fads.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#6Irony is my favorite form of humor. This is how the article shows up for me: https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs
That’s horrible. Let me recommend 1BlockerX:
Or use Safari reader mode. Or both.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#7I speculate whether this observation indicates that most of the chatter around "design" is signaling focused on appearing hip/trendy -- largely a branding effort overlaid on top of company goals, rather than an effort to think through actual user needs from the ground up. That would explain why so much of the focus is on fads.
I sometimes wonder if the branding effort I’ve seen over the past few years is even overlaid company goals.
A lot of it seems to be designers signaling to other designers. Like Dribbble has expanded across the web and product landing pages are now the shots.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#8Irony is my favorite form of humor. This is how the article shows up for me: https://ibb.co/6XqtQGs
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.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#9I 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.
Re: Don Norman on how design fails older consumers
#10Thoughtless 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 proof that it is theme-able) that is friendlier for screen readers shouldn’t take more time than an entire games store?
For me, the big takeaway from this article and companies like Discord is that people just don’t seem to care. And that’s often the status quo until an Apple comes along. We forget this, but back before the resurgence of Apple design was an afterthought, not a forethought even though there were obvious gains to be had and a better future to lead towards. But the vast majority of companies avoided the obvious win until Apple’s stock price shocked them into caring.
A significant fraction of everyone’s user base (including the core users) would benefit from accessible and thoughtful design, because like the article says, we’re all disabled sometimes. Now, we just need to figure out which company will have to show the world how to do it.