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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)

#61

Post by mkagenius »

This is not limited to just cars, lower to mid range mobile phones have touch sensors to unlock phones - they also struggle with dry old skins.

The smart watches also struggle when used for measuring ECG or blood pressure.

That is just one aspect - older people are most hindered by the UI design in my opinion, the buttons below the fold and not obvious coz they are not visible and when they are filling some form, they just don't know what to do after filling couple of boxes.

That's just one example.

The recent development in vision LLMs show decent promise and I think we might have to augment touch with voice controls even for handled phones.

Old people won't know where the setting to turn off usb debugging is but a LLM knows and can also see things and understand, it should be able to help them.

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

#62

Post by ericjmorey »

ballenf wrote: post #51
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.

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.

The fact that people who passed the test 40+ years ago barely know the laws that have been introduced since is reason enough for regular retesting.

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

#63

Post by GJim »

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?

> Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options

You mean taxis?

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

#64

Post by SoftTalker »

evanjrowley wrote: post #34
bee_rider wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must have some research going into touchscreen enhanced distracted driving. But I guess they must not have gathered enough data pointing that way, or something?

I was at NHTSA a decade ago. They were in talks to acquire a petabyte-size collection of videos of drivers' faces to study distraction, but there was no funding for a system that could hold it, so it never happened. Unsure of what happened with that initiative, but I hope it gets revived. Today there are many great options for efficiently analyzing video. Storage is also cheaper. Side Note: Last night I was driving h…

Predictable objection: what if I'm a passenger and want to watch YouTube but the driver doesn't have a phone so we need to use Maps also.

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

#65

Post by grues-dinner »

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…

My car has a little sub menu area on the dash board behind the steering wheel with panels for media, phone, navigation and something else. These can be navigated with the steering wheel buttons.

The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Sometimes I'll try to use the voice thing but it rarely works even when I do guess a valid command phrase. At least if I have to drive about with a bug in the car, I should get use out of it!

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

#66

Post by ossm1db »

sillywalk wrote: post #50
MaximilianEmel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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--…

I wonder if the touchscreen was a factor in recent crashes? They never say more than "in-flight malfunction."

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

#67

Post by lurking_swe »

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…

sounds like a stylus might help her interact with the phone better? they’re very cheap and they sell some larger ones that are easy to hold.

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

#68

Post by dageshi »

aurareturn wrote: post #42
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.

The youngest in gen alpha are just being born, there's a real chance they may not learn to drive at all because self driving is ubiquitous.

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

#69

Post by ericjmorey »

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.

Lock the screen while the car is not in "Park".

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

#70

Post by wongarsu »

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.

Tactile feedback is still a big issue with gestures. With a physical button you can feel that you have hit the button, can easily find it by touch if you missed it, and you can feel that you successfully actuated it. All of those are difficult on touch surfaces. Not insurmountable, but you have to put a lot of effort into things you get for free with physical interfaces
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