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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)

#51

Post by ballenf »

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.

Mandatory regular (every 5-10 years) driving tests seem like a no-brainer regardless of age. Also seems like the driving tests should be more stringent.

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

#52

Post by joezydeco »

I'm an older adult that's worked on touch interfaces and whatnot.

I don't blame the touch mechanism as much as I blame all the UX designers that adopted Material design schemas and their descendents. Bad layouts, unreadable fonts, horrible color schemes and literally NO contrast between type and background. It's apparent that none of this was tested on older users.

Apple is just as guilty of this. If you switch your iPhone into high contrast mode with thicker font weights it helps, but it wasn't necessary back in the early days of iOS.

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

#53

Post by withinboredom »

nanomonkey wrote: post #39

Most of my current wants from devices, and mobile computing, overlap quite nicely with what aging communities need from their devices. Sunlight readable displays, buttons that are distinguishable by feeling alone (ever seen the button variety in the cockpit of jet fighters!!!), and the ability to customize outputs in a sane manner that isn't full of twelve layer deep menus of vague options that change with each softw…

My son thinks it is magic that I can reach into my bag and pull out exactly what I want without looking. He didn't exactly grow up on touch screens, but I think about how much more tactile my life was as a child compared to his. It is night and day.

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

#54

Post by illwrks »

legitster wrote: post #46
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.

I’ve not used the mouse pointer but the previous models had a rotary encoder which is easier to work with. What isn’t mentioned is that there are hardware controls on the steering wheel for volume, next previous etc so you don’t need to interact with things very much

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

#55

Post by jedberg »

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.

Previously it was a political 3rd rail to even suggest a maximum driving age. "You can't take my freedom to travel!!".

But now, with Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options, it seems much more reasonable to implement such a thing. Why do we have to wait for someone to cause an accident before we take their license?

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

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

yborg wrote: post #11
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…

Same thing with my octogenarian grandmother, her fingertips are often so dry the screen does not register the touch; she has arthritis and poor vision so hand-eye targeting is poor with the tiny touch areas many apps have even on a tablet; the lack of any tactile feedback exacerbates these issues, people this age didn't grow up with capacitive touch screens and the lack of sensation after an action is alien to them.…

I won't use Siri or voice interfaces either. Just dislike them.

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

#57

Post by jeffbee »

jedberg wrote: post #55
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Previously it was a political 3rd rail to even suggest a maximum driving age. "You can't take my freedom to travel!!". But now, with Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options, it seems much more reasonable to implement such a thing. Why do we have to wait for someone to cause an accident before we take their license?

We don't even. Again in my city an octogenarian ran over two pedestrians in separate incidents a week apart, and nobody even suggested taking away their car.

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

#58

Post by cogogo »

legitster wrote: post #27

One thing to add to this, it's amazing that in 2025 voice assistants still suck so badly. You'd think this is a problem AI could finally nip in the bud. But even giving my phone the dumbest of instructions will result in an agonizing back and forth where it doesn't hear me quite right and constantly has to repeat back things. Heaven forbid you ask the phone to do anything useful like change a setting or pull up direc…

I ski a lot and wear headphones for music and to take any emergency calls. I use siri to ask “What time is it?” 50:50 whether or not it works. This has been my experience for as long as siri has existed and I have kept up to date on hw and sw. I only stick with it because pulling the phone out in the cold is even more annoying than having to repeat the long press and myself. Don’t get me started on a question that simple needing an internet connection… because I’m excluding that error case.

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

#59

Post by Johnny555 »

legitster wrote: post #46
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.

>when it comes to interacting with managing audio and navigation

Depends what you mean by managing audio - 90% of my audio interaction is adjusting volume and pressing the next/previous buttons. All easily done on my steering wheel buttons, though there are buttons near the radio to do the same thing (though they are capacitive buttons that are barely better than a touchscreen). I recently discovered that the "mute" button on the steering wheel is actually a "pause" button which is perfect since I rarely want to actually mute audio, but just pause it.

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

#60

Post by lupusreal »

legitster wrote: post #46
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.

Fucking around with your stereo while driving has never been safe.
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