Slashdot Mirror
How Today's Tech Alienates the Elderly
Barence writes "A UK academic has blamed unnecessarily complicated user interfaces for putting older people off today's technology. Mike Bradley, senior lecturer in product design and engineering at Middlesex University, claims efforts to be more inclusive are being undermined by software and hardware design that is exclusively targeted at younger users. He cites the example of the seemingly simple iPhone alarm clock. 'They're faced with a screen with a clock face and a plus sign icon, and they couldn't understand that you were "adding an alarm," so they didn't click the plus sign to get through to that menu. Pressing the clock image takes you through to choices about how the clock is displayed, and it's not easy to get back again.'"
I'm only 24 and I would never think of adding an alarm either, and probably wouldn't press a plus sign on a clock unless I was expecting it to show multiple time zones.
It's perhaps clearer if you see the screen in question. I don't use an iPhone myself, but I was interested to see what all the complaints are about, and as far as I can see this is what they're referring to, and the icon then leads to this. It's not a picture of a clock and a '+' symbol, it's a fairly clear list to which you are adding - the actual alarm setting screen has a clear 'Save' button presented with text. Very, very different to what I (and perhaps many others) envisaged from TFA's description (which was provided without any useful graphic, for some reason).
And sorry on the most alarm clocks on smartphones you could instead of the plus easily write "add/set alarm"
Would it be "set alarm" or "ampaci lau croni"? Adding an icon means the developer doesn't need to add as many strings to an application's localization database.