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Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

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Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#41

Post by _yb2s »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

Might be fine for non-critical entertainment systems which nowadays also take voice control, but never critical vehicle functions. Things like hazard lights and HVAC should be illegal to be on touch screens.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#42

Post by aurareturn »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

I wonder if Gen Alpha will prefer pure touchscreen controls in cars.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#45

Post by sammoe13 »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

I think we smoothly transitioned from touchscreens in cars being a luxury signifier, to them being both pretty cheap and STILL kind of a luxury signifier, though to a smaller extent nowadays.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#46

Post by legitster »

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

The only counterpoint to this - when it comes to interacting with managing audio and navigation, the alternatives to a touchscreen are probably more dangerous. Maybe the worst offender was Lexus who offered a mouse pointer in lieu of touchscreen until quite recently.

But I agree that there should be a federally mandated set of commonly-used buttons while driving that have to be tactile - windows, HVAC, audio, etc.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#47

Post by y1n0 »

lukan wrote: post #4
iwanttocomment wrote: post #3

This seems to be an real and important problem with capacitive touch screens. My elderly mother is often unable to make a touch register on recent Apple devices when a touch appears to have clearly happened and with reasonable force. She blames it on her fingers being "numb" but there genuinely seems to be a problem unrelated to her actions. (I've used the devices in question, and they appear to be fine. This is not…

It was a topic here on HN before. Consensus was, it has to do with the moisture of the skin. Older people have drier skin, so worse touchscreen response.

Early 50s.

I believe it to be a combination of dryer skin, poorer circulation, and calloused fingertips.

It’s incredibly frustrating. I didn’t really have a problem until this year.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#48

Post by jedberg »

Older people have dryer hands. My mother in law has trouble with her phone all the time because of this.

A vaguely related story:

I had to get my fingerprints taken to volunteer at my kids school. They use a touchscreen device to take the fingerprints, and it kept failing. Mind you I was only about 44 at the time, so not exactly elderly.

The teenager working the counter says to me, "Oh yeah, that happens to old people a lot, you'll just have keep trying". The sting of calling me old was real.

She gave me some hand lotion and after about three more tries it finally read my prints.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#49

Post by SoftTalker »

jeffbee wrote: post #28
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

We shouldn't have 89-year-old drivers in cars, either. Full stop. In my city we've had three pedestrian fatalities in less than a year and all the drivers were aged 79 or older.

At least make them pass a road test. Make sure they can operate the car safely at the posted speed limit. Give them a vision test, maybe limit them to daytime driving. Some 90 year olds are fine to drive, but I agree many are not. And driving around 10-20 mph under the limit is a hazard in itself.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#50

Post by sillywalk »

MaximilianEmel wrote: post #20
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

While I much prefer physical buttons, I do think gestures could be made to work.

I'm forced to quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy:

"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."

As a side note, the F-35 has a touchscreen interface that has been described as difficult to use when the jet is in motion.

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