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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.'"
Couldn't that also be interpreted as "necessarily simple"?
Older generations don't get it not because of its complexity, but its simplicity. They might understand better if everything had a label and step-by-step info, but for the rest of us that do understand, this just adds complexity when it might not be needed.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Stepping on lawns also alienate the elderly.
In the back of my mind I still thought I was reading The Onion for this summary.
In rebuttal, I offer my personal anecdote: My mom has never had such an easy time using technology, than now in 2011, now that I've set her on iOS and soon, OSX. Just because the older generation doesn't find it intuitive doesn't mean they can't figure it out with a little tinkering, or at worst, very little Applecare phone support. To insinuate they can't set freaking alarms because they might accidentally push the wrong thing at first is insulting.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
.. and even if they didn't, they didn't even TRY the only other option, after finding the first did not work?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
But seriously, why a plus sign inside a square? Why not an oblong marked ALARM?
Is there some way to make such things simple enough for the elderly without detracting from the functionality for younger people? iPhones are far from the only thing that the elderly have trouble with, but it doesn't seem wise to tailor everything in the world to cater specifically to them. If designers can't find a way to make a device useable by both the young and the old without compromising on the usability for either group then there really ought to be two separate devices. I've certainly seen enough infomercials to know there's certainly a large market of elderly people out there you can market to directly.
I'm certainly sympathetic since i plan to be elderly myself one day, but i'd like to hope when that day arrives i'll either try to learn how to use whatever new-fangled thing the kids are into, or use alternative devices/software/whatever that fits my needs. (Kind of like how the first thing i do after installing Windows 7 is make extensive modifications to give it a "Windows Classic" theme.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting next to a gentleman, 55 to 60 years old, who was having a great deal of trouble performing what most of us would consider the most basic of functions such as how to add a new city to the iPhone's built-in weather feature. He had just purchased the phone and so I helped him through the process. It was quite an eye-opener for me. He had not even figured out how to appropriately tap on the screen (he was pressing on it as if it were a mechanical button and so his touches never registered). He was constantly misspelling with they keyboard, could not figure out how to correct a mistake. It took him about a dozen efforts and maybe about 3 minutes before he successfully typed in Boston.
I would estimate he would need a one-on-one training of at least a few hours in duration before he could being to use some of the other iPhone's most basic features.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I help my 82-year-old dad out every day on his computer. He has used them in business since the 80's and old CRT 80x24 text interfaces worked much better for these geezers.
I got him a huge 27" widescreen which really helps him read the text, but windows are so big, the menus might as well be in a different country from the minimize/maximize/close and it takes forever to get his eyes from the center of a window to a status display at the bottom.
What many older people need is less options or someway to put all your affordances in one central location.
I think more UI designers need cataracts, macular degeneration, and to be hit over the head with a rubber mallet, before they can understand what old people go through. Hit me with a rubber mallet while you are at it.
Once someone sees that the plus sign adds an alarm, then they'll know the plus sign adds an alarm. You only have to figure it out once.
I'm not elderly, but I'm old-ish (63) and I watch people my age struggle with very simple things because rather than learn the underlying concepts, they learn by rote. They learn "the second icon from the left does this". They don't bother to learn what the computer is really doing. Use words like "filesystem" and their eye glaze over. But without basic understanding of the technology, everything on the screen is going to be "magic" - if you don't understand the whys and wherefores, there is no hope of ever accomplishing anything but rote memorization.
I'd say about 90% of the time, they are perfectly well able to understand what's happening if they want - they just don't want to. You can't fix "don't want to learn". The ones who value learning, who don't have a culture of shutting of their brains and refusing to ever think, do just fine.
Of course this doesn't apply once certain disabilities like Alzheimer's enter the picture - that's a different problem and one no UI is going to fix.
I think this is where part of the disconnect is. I think younger users are comfortable with the fact that it's unlikely they're going to 'break' the device or get hurt if they just start randomly pushing buttons to see what they do. For many older users not used to computers doing random things was historically a good way to break things or hurt yourself so they're very hesitant to do so. When explaining things to older users I usually start with telling them there is really nothing they can do to break it and when in doubt just start trying random buttons to see what they do. Note I realize you can accidentally delete data and such but if they haven't been using a device before there really isn't anything on there to delete. If they truly manage to muck it up you can just reset it to defaults and they can start again with very little loss. These users aren't usually creating tons of content they just want to do simple things.
Why would they think that setting an alarm has anything to do with a mathematical operation? I think you're simply used to a specific GUI paradigm.
These things do come with manuals.
Computers function in a different way to physical objects.
Making people accept this is far, far simpler than trying to force every computer idea into a real-world analog.
Stop treating a computer like a car or bike - you can't learn it in a week and you'll be spending a lot of your life using one so get it right. Even if you're old you can learn (and it'll do your mind good too).
Everyone can name ways that an application should be simpler. Trouble is, ask 100 people and you'll get 100 different answers, many of which will be mutually exclusive.
You agree with me.
Its most anyone that isn't tech-savvy.
What ever happened to interfaces deigned for a *user*, not a techie ( like we had with the newton for example )?
The interfaces should adapt to us, not the other way around.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I hate to admit it, but I think I may be getting old, I bought my first Android phone recently and still don't know how to do some seemingly simple stuff, I know it can be done as I have done some of it on accident, but no idea how, like getting icon views of all the application screens at once.
How many people here would take one look at that UI and assume that the + meant 'mod this up'?
But seriously, why a plus sign inside a square? Why not an oblong marked ALARM?
The "+" has an association with numbers and your mod points affect a post's score. A thumbs up/down may have conveyed this more clearly , but then you run into issues with cultural interruptions of hand gestures(go ahead, thumbs up a middle eastern).
It has one of the most intuitive user interfaces ever. So much that even the noobiest of tech/computer users can figure it out. Perhaps if they can't understand how the amazingly easy to use the iphone UI is, they need a dummies book or one of these
It sounds like they don't know that "add" includes "set."
Granddaddy used to drive his car to the store, and couldn't understand that certifying a request to schedule an airshuttle pickup was just a simpler way of accomplishing the same goal. Old people are so stupid!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you can read, you can use tech. Read the manual. Google it. look up a video on youtube. Or just ask someone.
there is no excuse for ignorance. In tech or anything else. Saying that older people have some special disadvantage is just a load of crap.
The summary describes a screen that does not exist in the iPhone alarm clock app, and the "+" button (not icon) is pretty clear in context, being right next to the word "Alarms" like it is.
It's about a new "language" for them to learn - not that it escapes them intellectually. And, its NEVER been easier then now, and I expect it will get easier moving forward. But, the brit has a point - it is still way less than optimum; partly because who fuck is TEACHING them.
I spent three - two hour secessions with mom (70+) and now she is cutting movies, playing solitaire and emailing like anybody else, with attachments, particularly word docs, Printmaker docs, and photos. not bad. not at all bad. still struggles a little in some areas but doing well with Mac OS X and iOS on her iPod. and My dad likes Win 7 - and is very proficient with web surfing and online trading - same age as mom. Neither of them are college grads. Neither of them can work the dvd / vcr optimally - or use the dreaded cable interface for channel surfing. My dad is a machinist - wicked smart, never graduated high school, but owned a company for 38 years with ensuing patents and more... and put three boys through top US four year institutions. My mom knows more vocabulary than yours, period. Never went to college, worked as a paralegal for 40 years - brilliant women. We cant honestly be putting people down because they fail(ed) at something, are we? Are learning curves only for children? Is inspiration only for the youth? Does the only credibility these days come with PhD's and they the only assholes the get to use the microphone?
So to me - its about preference and how well you were taught and inspired. Seems like old hat.
AND I would guess you want to pay attention to this elderly class of folks as technology evolves at a radioactive pace - they are hitting 70 years old at a clip of TEN THOUSAND PER DAY.
In spanish, no. We use the word "agregar", as in "agregar una alarma" (add an alarm), but "sumar" as in "sumar 4 y 5" (add 4 and 5). Both are synonyms, but according to the context, we use one or the other.
So no, a clock next to a plus sign doesn't really tell me much.
At the risk of invoking Plato's rant about youth: this isn't very new. The last couple waves of technology befuddled new users too. Remember all the VCRs permanently blinking 12:00 in the 1980s, followed by microwaves doing the same in the 1990s? And that's just sticking to old jokes about digital clocks. But I'm sure most of us who're old enough, or knew others who were old enough, have heard a wealth of similar things about devices of the same decades... and similar things about cars dating to several decades before that (not even the maintenance issues, but even simple operation issues like finding the lights and wipers on different models, or driving a manual shift vehicle at all).
Some of these even apply in the other timewise direction; today's youth would not find many devices from the 1960s intuitive at first contact either. Record players and typewriters (and adding machines) come to mind as things one might have trouble using without instruction, especially if they weren't already set up and ready to use.
I was curious so I just checked this out.
There are multiple tabs: World Clock, Alarm, Stopwatch, Timer.
At the top of World Clock and Alarm, you have Edit and Add.
Underneath, you have rows of clocks and alarms in each respective tab.
So you actually add a clock in the world clock tab and add an alarm in the alarm tab. TFA is wrong or misleading.
This makes sense because Cupertino is a default clock listed there, and obviously that is not my city. So I can watch the time of multiple cities. The presentation is pretty clear. Or not.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I think the elderly are keeping tech evolution a giant step back... then again, I can't ask, in good conscience, for them to be ignored as I'm sure 50 years from now I'll be glad to use them new-fangled holographic systems without scratching my head too much....
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
The problem is that the elderly stopped learning new things for too long so the tools atrophied. A young person with a brand new smart phone would come in with a clear head and immediately start mentally mapping out functionality and figuring out, maybe not even at a concious level, all the underlying metaphors. They quickly intuit the best way to tap the screen. They figure out how to back out of things and start pressing buttons to see what everything does.
Being old doesnt prevent you from doing any of this. I've seen plenty of old people who never lost that spark to explore and learn who have no trouble with this stuff. Maybe they're not as sharp and it takes a bit longer to learn, but they get it. I don't think we should be dumbing things down for people who don't try to help themselves.
That's just basic bad design. I would (and have) done the same thing with some alarm widgets. Actually, you would be surprised how many alarms are badly designed - probably because anybody can program a simple clock. Why the heck would you want to change the clock design by tapping it? Is that the main functionality of the clock? The clock change function should be in the menu somewhere. And if it rings, I expect to see a great big bell or button which I can hit to switch it off. Preferably I should be able to shout at it as well.
We of course understand computers and programmers. So we don't get in a fit, think for a second and hit the back button or something similar.
and i am alienated by todays user interfaces. What alienates me most is that showing the keybinding seem to be a thing of the past and pure text menus are not possible to turn on.I like a simple alphabetically sorted list to start apps, which would take less space and not be as weird as having 9 screenful of badly designed, stupidly copied or sometime identical icons. And sorry on the most alarm clocks on smartphones you could instead of the plus easily write "add/set alarm" - no lack of space there.
It's not an older/younger thing, it's entirely an "unnecessarily complicated or obscure" thing. Sure, younger people have more experience with enigmatic interfaces, and are more likely to keep trying without getting frustrated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the interface in question appeals to young folk. For instance, a "set alarm" button would be more immediately understood regardless of age, or (and this point is completely missed) degree of geekiness.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Both gone now, but vastly different in use of tech. I don't believe my mom ever used a PC, but my dad was a UNIX and MS Office instructor up until a few months before he passed at 81. I remember my son, at age 4, trying to teach my mom how to use MSPaint.
In 2050, when you whippersnappers are 70 and 80, all the 'kids' will be ragging on you geezers about how you don't 'get' the new-fangled brain-silicon interface, with the 3DHD corneal implants.
Maybe he's using a custom clock app or something, but on my iPhone the built in clock app has four clearly labeled mode setting buttons at the bottom: "World Clock", "Alarm", "Stopwatch", and "Timer". Pressing the one called "Alarm" to set an alarm seems, well, obvious, and when you do that you get a screen saying "no alarms" and exactly one "+" button you can press, so unless you simply freeze up at that point I don't see how this can be so confusing. In particular, no clock face is displayed at this point so there is no possibility of, "Pressing the clock image takes you through to choices about how the clock is displayed, and it's not easy to get back again."
If you want to criticize the alarm and calendar stuff on the iPhone, a better place to start is the spinning dial thing used to enter times. (Which is what comes up once you press "+".) A lot of people dislike this and find it hard to use. I don't find it difficult personally, but I have to admit I'd prefer a numeric keypad.
That's a problem with the Spanish language... Just kidding. There is a difference between simple in theoretical usage and simple in actual usage, the latter being "intuitive." Obviously this is one example of simple in the theoretical. Let's face it: if many people don't know what it is, they will explore just to figure it out. If someone doesn't know and won't experiment, it is probably due to the fear of the unknown. This is a result of being unable to separate "safe exploration" with "unsafe exploration" in my opinion. For example, you might try microwaving some sort of food that is meant to be put in an oven to see if it'll cook faster or whatever. However, if you hear a strange noise in your home, you most likely wouldn't go exploring without some means of protection. The phone offers no protection from the unknown, a problem for those who need some sort of security guarantee that the phone won't suddenly go bad or take you completely away from where you want to go.
I have been a captive in America my entire life. Everybody and everything uses customary units instead of metric.
Designers tend to like cute and clever. Sometimes this results in interfaces that are incomprehensible. Apple is the worst offender. It has nothing to do with age.
These are two things that the elderly stereotypically are not accustomed to and have not had as a constant requirement throughout their lives. I suspect this will be recognized as a generational issue. The elderly of tomorrow who are today's Gen-X, Gen-Y & Millennial adults will not have this problem. We've been born into a culture that will mow you down if you don't keep yourself up to date.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
He had mastered Mario Brothers using a cheat code we installed for him, but could not rescue the princess in level 5. He finally became enraged, ripped the little gray Nintendo box from the TV plugs, and smashed it to the ground. Ok, that was a long time ago, but he's not going near my laptop.
Gently reply
I don't think so. The problem is that the iPhone is "designed in California", by elitist industrial and UI designer. I have an Android phone. Do you know how to add an alarm? Click on the Bell button (that has "Alarm" text below it) and then the big fat button that *says* "Add an alarm".
I'm used to europeans cars too. They have no text, just icons, and it's silly. It's weird for me to sit in an american car, where all buttons are labeled with text (and it makes so much more sense). With cars you're basically forced to read the manual, because some of the symbols are really abstract. Others are really "culture specific", like the blue snowflake that means "turn on the air conditioner". I learned that "kinda because" it was near the fan controls, so I figured red=hot, blue=cold. But I had no idea what a snowflake was. Where I live we don't get snow, so the "asterisk thingy", by itself, doesn't mean anything to me. I've never seen a snowflake, and neither have most of the people in my country.
I work Tech Support and am confronted with this reality on a day by day basis. Nine times out of Ten it is an unwillingness to learn. To experiment and discover the answer. Unless it's a cute old Grandma, and then my opinion is that she shouldn't be bothered with that kind of thing.
Once you've released your UI, it's game over. Go away and design something else please. My experience in family tech support is that patches that try to tweak the UI inevitably result in long angry rants over the phone as if I was the one who decided to "mess it up".
Couldn't that also be interpreted as "necessarily simple"? Older generations don't get it not because of its complexity, but its simplicity. They might understand better if everything had a label and step-by-step info, but for the rest of us that do understand, this just adds complexity when it might not be needed.
Age has little to do with it. Once a person, young or old, has seen it done once or twice they get it. Its really nothing more than younger people were the early iPhone/iPod touch adopters, or early adopters of computers that used similar user interface widgets. If you hand an iPhone to an older person today its more likely to be something new and different, just like it was for a younger person five or so years ago.
Computers have this concept of things being n-ary instead of single or double. Ex: Most real alarm clocks have 2 alarms - so there is either a switch with 2 positions, or 2 sets of buttons. So you might have on1, off1, on2, off2, etc. But a computer alarm might have a max of 2 million alarms, so instead you have the concept of adding or removing an alarm.
This concept frustrates computer illiterate people all the time. It happens on cameras, thermostats, televisions, etc. Remember when remote controls had a dial with a "tick" for each station? Now there are too many stations for that. Cameras had a switch with 4 ISO settings: ISO 100, 200, 400, 800. Now my camera has a dozen ISO settings. etc. etc.
The elderly can't even handle most CD players, I really don't think design has anything to do with it. They're unwilling to attempt to use things, so they just ask for help.
My grandmother had no music in her car for over a month because she put a CD in upside down and never bothered to press the eject button. It didn't work, so she assumed it was broken and didn't think it was worth getting fixed.
My fiancee's grandmother constantly asks how to make her standalone CD player... play. Never, has she put a CD in and pressed the double-sized button in the center that says "Play" under a big single forward arrow. However, she can work a cassette player that has identical buttons (with slightly different text on FF/RW instead of Skip and the like).
In the case of "adding an alarm" and how terribly confusing that must be: if there's only one button, press it. Also, isn't this exactly the market Samsung makes the Jitterbug for?
In English, we use the word 'add', as in "add an alarm", but "plus" as in "4 plus 5".
Its not unreasonable to expect that words and symbols that are synonymous can be interchangeable in an abstract interface.
Plus and Minus, Add and Remove, Create and Delete... they are all the same, with computers you have to learn this approximately *once* then you are set.
The problem lies in the fact that people don't seem to learn, they just make the same mistakes, over, and over, and over...
Invaders must die
It's easy to blame the elderly. Most of the posts on this topic are doing just that. However, if Apple wants to blame the elderly because they can't figure out iOS, that's fine. I'm sure Samsung or HTC or somebody will be more than happy to sell them a phone running Android that is configured to meet the needs of the purchaser.
When Apple was pretty much the only smart phone around, they could come out with whatever interface they wanted and uses had to adapt to it. That is no longer the case. And, since the elderly are the last large demographic to market smart phones to, whoever caters to their needs, whether real or perceived, will be the one selling phones.
Simple and intuitive are not synonymous.
1px wide window borders -- for someone with shaky hands these are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to resize (most windows don't include the drag handle).
Nearly all the other non shitty (high contrast) themes it comes with also have 1px wide borders. I get that the border area is destined for a clean look, but does the look have to be tied to the usability? Can't an invisible area around the window provide the drag handle features in a size not dependent on the pixel count of the border? The bug report response says, "no". (I know about the menu option for resize, but that's not a real solution).
I was glad to see shaky-hand assist in the form of Gnome's "drag n drop" threshold -- My neighbor and grandma love this feature; It keeps them from accidentally duplicating or moving files while trying to click them.
The move to Unity further alienates the elderly people in my life -- My grandma is willing to learn a new paradigm, but my neighbor switched to Linux expressly because of the "confusing" new Vista / Win7 UI features. Looks like we'll be "upgrading" to Debian + XFC at this rate.
Meanwhile I wrote a script that uses compiz window positioning to provide the side-by-side window resizing shortcut for them (similar to Win7) -- they would still rather grab the edges of the damn window, and it's very painful to watch them try.
I used to live near the flagship What-a-Burger fast-food restaurant (near their headquarters in Corpus Christi, TX) they have/had free WIFI, and at least 10-15 elderly people meet there in the mornings to chat and do crosswords, check their e-mail, etc over coffee/breakfast. At first I was surprised to be joining conversations with them about the latest computer malware and new websites, applications, privacy policies -- even games, but then I realized: That's how I'll be in the not too distant future, and I have no intention of loosing touch with the world either.
Many elderly people want to participate in today's technology -- They can still learn, you don't have to dumb things down, just add tool-tips or other hints -- It really doesn't take much time to make most apps' UI friendly for them -- Configurable text size, scrolling areas, (full app zoom & panning at worse), instead of a simple static layout -- My programs have a "seniors" mode, that has also come in handy for a Muscular Dystrophy afflicted associate of mine.
P.S. Many elderly people grew up in a time when a button, knob or lever did exactly one thing. The volume knob changes volume, power button turns things on/off -- Some of today's car radios toggle between clock / tune / power / input / on knob push, and spin to change options, software "innovation" can produce less intuitive interfaces. "Soft" buttons that change function depending on what's on the screen are a common source of confusion, in my experience. I've even seen outdoor lighting that toggles between: On, Off, Timed, Off (depending on the number of times you flip the switch) -- confusing to no end for some.
With touch screens & other GUIs: Making the on screen controls visually and/or spatially distinct can help to mitigate the "single function knob" confusion -- (eg: change the color of the UI element depending on its function)
The specific memories I'm referring to are from fifteen years ago when I was teaching a "this is a mouse, this is a keyboard" class. People wouldnt explore the (then) text-based menus in the various word processors we showed them. It was baffling to me.
Rule #1 of computing: If you don't know how to do something, punt caution to the wind with steel-toed boots and randomly do stuff. You'd be surprised how many tech-savy peeps get most of their knowledge from mucking about with stuff they didn't initially know.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
in fact, the iPad is the only computer he can actually use. When he wants to browse today's newspaper.... I placed a shortcut to the newspaper website on the home screen, tell him to touch it, and *bang*, there's today's news. He can't use a mouse because of disabilities (arthritis has locked up his right hand).. Besides, the whole WIMP interface is lost on him. But he sure knows how to 'click' an onscreen button, and double-tap to zoom-in on a web page. That's all he needs.
Oh and the whole thing about setting the iOS alarm clock is just stupid. (Besides being retired and not having to follow any kind of schedule, he knows how to use a real-world alarm clock.)
Intuitive is not the same as having common points of reference. User interfaces that are truly intuitive are used, joyfully, by the older crowd. If, however, the interface is relying on knowledge of a common frame of reference/experience that older people do not, they fail.
Examples:
Touchscreens and touchscreen navigation. Growing up, older people were trained NOT to touch their expensive screens because it would make them dirty and damage them. A simple arrow or other visual queue on the screen is often enough. That or a quick demo from someone. People who develop truly intuitive interfaces have no trouble with the older crowd.
Response times. In a mechanical world, pushing a lever or flipping a switch often had immediate results, even if it was just a grinding/whirring as the machine began its larger process. When an older person presses a button and does not get some type of immediate feedback, they generally assume that button press failed. They tend to then repeatedly press or hold down a button. Makes sense in the mechanical world they grew up in, as physical buttons often "catch". Can be extremely problematic in a digital system which queues commands.
Experimentation. The mechanical generation is less likely to experiment or tinker with processes they do not at all understand. This is wise when it comes to machinery. If you cannot figure out basic mechanical processes involved by looking at it, generally you shouldn't take apart expensive machinery. You are likely to do severe damage to the machine or your body. The older generation generally does well at research, adaptation, and experimentation with machinery. They've been taught what they can safely fiddle with and cannot. They have no such experience base for modern electronics and software. When was the last time you changed your oil yourself? Adjusted the timing on your vehicle? BTW, the same generally holds true for electronics. If you don't have at least a basic understanding of operating systems, electronics hardware, and electrical safety, you aren't going to be able to safely experiment with your electrical devices.
The younger generation isn't superior and weren't born with this knowledge. They learned much of it in school and through their peer groups. The author is just pointing out that what one generation sees as "simple" doesn't necessarily mean that it really is inherently simple to understand. My Dad memorized log tables in school. He can do all sorts of "simple" calculations in his head that the younger generation needs to go find a log table or a calculator to answer.
The built-in alarm clock app in iOS works nothing like the article describes.
The use of a "+" button to mean "add [something]" is used throughout iOS. You don't use the "+" button to adjust an existing alarm, BTW. The alarm clock app initially has no alarms set, so you use the "+" button to add one (which then automatically takes you to a screen where you can set the alarm). If you want to change an alarm, you press the clearly labeled "Edit" button.
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.
It annoyed me no end that I had to read the manual to learn that it was necessary to push and hold the red Off switch, to turn on my phone.
Right out of the box, intuitive interface fail.
The Next/Back buttons are backwards for those who learned to read from right to left and no amount of experimentation would show me how to simply touch in a number and call rather than make a listing in my address book and then use the listing to call--I had to read the manual for that too.
The button labels are too small to read if you aren't nearsighted from staring too long at the screen so experimentation would be totally random.
Then there were the messed up phone calls where opening the phone did not lead to listening to my incoming call, but pushing the green (lift handset) button disconnected the call.
All I wanted was to enter a number and make a connection, or answer the phone and talk to my caller. All the "bonus" features are unnecessary bloatware.
OK, now all you folks who think your UI is so easy to understand are thinking, braindead granny but I am no technopeasant. Electrical & Computer Engineer with experience in UI design (among many other things) and compassion for the folks who just want to use their hardware, not have it use them. The manual should not be three times the size of the device and rendered in super tiny print.
Whenever approaching something new, one has expectations on how things will go. If the expectation is that new technology is "hard and complex" one's subconscious will work to make that true. Most elderly people are under the impression that technology=complex.
The statement that a user interface should be intuitive to someone with 0 experience is stupid. If someone has no experience working with something they will transfer experience from something similar. My advice to low experience users; read the manual.
I hate article like the one referred to; heavy on what is wrong and very light on what to do about it. It is very easy to point at issues but the magic is in solving them.
I remember old Windows 3.x and 95 applications that had a toolbar full of icons, but I sure as hell couldn't tell what most of those icons were meant to do. Usually I had to hover over it and read the tooltip popup to find out what it did. Office 2003 was a lot like this as well. When GUIs came into vogue perhaps application designers/programmers felt pressured to "iconize" everything, but some things are just more efficient written out as text.
They're elderly, so all we have to do is wait them out.
It just shows how primitive and incomplete our technology is that it can't cope with the elderly.
Frankly, I'm surprised. Logan's Run was released in 1976 and we haven't made any progress toward that vision of society.
Have gnu, will travel.
I see. The interface is too cool for old people to use. It's not poor design and form over function.
You definitely underestimate the issue at hand, Older people are accustomed to doing things one way, this will still be true in 30 years, so when a new way of doing things comes along, we will fall out of step because we will become stubborn and cling, like elderly people to our set ways.
I'm always right, except when i'm not.
I think the problem has more to do with abstractions that people develop over their lifetimes. Recently there was an article on BBC about an Amazonian tribe that has concept of events happening in sequence but no abstract concept of time. Here we have people who grew up with clocks that could only have one alarm set, so for them clock = alarm (alarm clock). An abstract concept of an alarm and many instances of which that can be added to an existing clock is unknown and confusing to them.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
That is the exact problem with gesture based computing, trying to repeat that accidental slide thump to the upper left that got you the cool feature..
That makes perfect sense. My train of thought is, how can you possibly set an alarm unless you first *have* an alarm! I guess it's the assumption that you already have an alarm that might be the problem.
It remind me of when vcr's came out, and parents everywhere relied on their kids to set them. Then they invented video plus, total wtf to anyone who could operate a video... and yet...
Invaders must die
Nah, the problem as I see it is that there is a lot of really bad UI design out there. And the horror is that this is being considered the standard against which to measure usability. If I compare something like a TV set remote to a computer I am struck by the limited number of choices and the immediacy of the response. On the other hand, my wife has been struggling with an application that as a response to 'print' asks if one wants to delete all previous alert messages.. WTF! If you respond 'yes' then it pops up a print dialog box... not the best or clearest. But there is so much of this kind of stuff. And what makes me crazy is to read responses from folks who's idea of growing up with computers is being around for the last decade or two... heck, when I got interested in computers there were debates about binary vs BCD arithmetic for scientific vs business applications and mercury delay lines were the state of the art. After over half a century of development we still seem to be struggling with problems of building tools that the user actually wants to use, not just the guy who hacked the code.
Only 58, but my eyes are getting worse as time goes on. My biggest problem is web sites that display in flash. Text about 5 points!?! Can't resize that crap. If I can't read it, I just ignore that site and move on somewhere else.
I propose we institute the death penalty for anybody who has their text and background in colors that are nearly the same. Contrast, people, contrast!
Oh, and get the fuck off my lawn!!!
And take your pooping dog with you!!!
Before commenting, please read "Design of Everyday Things" by Norman.
Please.
I am not a crackpot.
"I have an Android phone."
Ahh, that explains it then.
Seriously though, you don't know what snow is? That's just silly. We don't suffer from hurricanes in the uk, but if some product - used a stylised hirrican icon to indicate something was really windy, I dont think it would b particularly hard to figure out...
The thing is you have to set a bar for minimum expectations, usually the bar is set pretty low. People really need to have a think about how it reflects on them when they claim the bar isn't low enough.
Invaders must die
I think that your comment illustrates a large part of the problem. Non technical people cannot imagine what features a program could have, since the features are becoming more and more abstracted from real-life metaphors.
With older alarms, there were either 1 or a fixed number of alarms. You could see them and interact with them. With the newer alarm app, you can have an infinite number of alarms, and they don't exist until you tell the program to create them.
You aren't "setting the alarm", you are creating an instruction for the program to behave like an alarm. This is a concept that is very foreign to someone used to being able to relate to computer concepts to physical objects.
Adding an icon means the developer doesn't need to add as many strings to an application's localization database.
It sounds good..., but anyone not familiar with whatever `universal' iconography the designer chose would disagree.
The whole `office desk' metaphor, for example, is completely lost on people who've never either experienced an actual office-like setting (with desks, file-folders, documents, etc.) or been trained on the metaphor itself. Red means `something bad' in America, `something good' in China, and nothing in particular to the 10% of people worldwide who just can't see it. For a blind user interacting via a screen-reader, custom text is likely to be infinitely better than custom icons.
Sometimes none of these things matter, sometimes they all do. Sometiimes your users are literally illiterate, and any kind of iconography is more learnable than textual labels, but that's also a minority case.
Of course, if what you meant was `not localising is a way of cheaping-out', I'll agree with that.
-rozzin.
I think there's a basic misunderstanding on the part of "designers" who go for cuteness (or technically correct but user-experience dumb) when designing interfaces. There's also the problem of over-representation of 20-30 year old, white, male points of view (just, that old chestnut).
My parents are having to sort out getting digital TV set-top boxes for their home, as the analogue signal is all but gone. My mother goes in to try and get some help understanding how the thing they bought works and cops a flurry of attitude from the young male who literally says to her face "I can't stand it when people say they're not tech-savvy. It's not hard". Dad goes in, "Sure sir, how can I help you?".
Having dealt with developers (and been a developer) for almost 20 years, I see this kind of dickwad mentality everywhere: the user doesn't know what he/she wants. Really? Trying talking their language.
Like a lot of people here, I've been using computers since I was 4 (1980). I have used practically every interface there has been save a few. I'm 35 now and honestly I can say that a lot of menus and buttons on the iPhone are not obvious. For instance, if I want to see details about a call without actually making a call or if I want to delete a message or stop a program and restart it, how was I supposed to know that clicking on the main button twice would do that. Or that clicking on edit in the list would allow me to delete a message instead of edit a new one. Or that in order to view the details of a call I was supposed to press my 15mm wide finger exactly over a button 4mm wide and that putting it anywhere else on that line would call that person back. And what the hell can I do within a video in order to see the menu so that I can turn down the volume? Still haven't reliably figured that out.
I think what happens is the interface people like to create interfaces that they think are so slick that they can get off too at night, but its not necessarily something that makes sense based on what people already know. You can't just change everything and hope its discoverable. Discoverability is based just as much on people's experience as it is on common sense. Then again, I'm a Linux zealot fanboy, what good is my opinion, right?
Historically setting VCRs has been a piece of cake! I'm 26 I don't know how to use a fax machine, or ANYTHING steam-powered. It's not an issue unique to 2011.
I hate the majority of icons, they pander to the illiterate or mentally retarded. I can read 20x as fast as I can figure out some badly drawn and poorly chosen figure.
The problem for anyone who finds it "difficult" to use a piece of technology has nothing to do with the interface, but rather with their fear of the technology itself, or fear of "messing something up" or "not doing it right". It's a confidence issue, not comprehension.
If very small children can pick up a Nintendo DS or a LeapFrog device and use it with little instruction, then it stands to reason that, all things being equal, the elderly should be able to use a cell phone just as easily, if for no other reason than they learned how to read decades ago. Blaming the UI is absurd.
A plus sign and a clock may look like one choice to a person. Instead, they words "add clock" would have been a much better choice. Icons should be removed from most GUI and replaced with words, which are much clearer and can be comprehended faster by the literate.
Yes. Snow is that white thing that appears in christmas postcards, all over the floor and houses. It doesn't look anything like a snowflake.
Oh, you mean that snow is actually made of billions of those little asterisk looking thingies? I always thought it was just little white balls that fell from the sky.
See? Where do you draw the line for "Minimum expectations"? MOST of the world doesn't get any snow - only high latitudes and mountain areas. Billions of people have never seen snow in real life. That's why I picked that particular example.
Wrong.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Billions of people don't drive european cars. I'm going to put it out there that in most european countries, (ie the main market for european cars) there is a broadly similar level of education. That education will include - right round the age of 6 or 7 (so it can hardly be a difficult concept) some information about weather. Are you telling me honestly that the spanish curriculum doesn't include anything about snowflakes. See I was under the impression it was a staple of any sound science curriculum. If it isnt you guys are missing out, snowflakes are pretty interesting subject matter.
Invaders must die
there is no conspiracy - simple is hard, and the elderly have a harder time learning the new (as computers essentially are). sometimes you just cant teach an old dog new tricks. :->
"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple". (Charles Mingus)
I wouldn't know about the "spanish" curriculum, that would be from Spain, and I'm in Argentina. I don't remember studying snowflakes in elementary or high school.
Not really sure about how schools in the UK are. Here, schools don't usually have labs (except maybe a computer lab), they have a tiny library, and the rest is just classrooms. Didactic material is subject to a child's imagination, except the huge geometry set the teacher has (my mom had to buy her own, to teach), and a world OR the country's map. No projectors, slides, videos, animals, etc.
South america is a big market for European cars. If you take a look, all you will see will be VW, FIAT, Renault, Citroen, etc. And the European versions of Ford and Chevrolet. NO american cars here, except rare old (60s) exceptions, and a few Dodge Rams. And the odd japanese car too.
Also, you miss the point about using symbols: if you need to have scientific background (even elementary school) to use the air conditioner function in your car's UI, then you're doing it all wrong.
...I can't adjust the comment level slider on Slashdot on my brand new HTC Incredible 2.
"The empty vessel makes the greatest sound." -- William Shakespeare; Henry V, 4. 4
This. There was a time when buttons where buttons. Then, somewhere (was it during or after the time of Internet Explorer 4?), someone got the idea that it would be cool to not have "buttons" per se, but rather just draw a bunch of pictures on the screen.
You're supposed to "know" that they are buttons, and they change color, pop up, or do something else when you hover over them.
This all, of course, has more to do with the ego gratification of program managers on a particular project than actual benefit for users (old and newb).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This makes me nostalgic for classic Palm UI style: avoid icon buttons, use oblongs with text inside instead, because that will make it easier for the novice user to know what button does what. (Though there were a lot of third-party Palm apps that broke these rules by having confusing icons.)
Indeed. Most of what I've learned over the years had been at the cost of breaking something, when you get to the root of it. And yes, abusing your phone is a lot less dangerous than, say, a thresher.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I would have commented earlier but i couldn't figure out how to start the keyboard.....
Now get off my lawn.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Well, Duh, the problem si clar to everyone now: The concept of "adding an alarm" is a culture specific concept that is not supported by a large number of people. Even wehre people know it is possible to have more than one alarm,, may people do not relate to the concept of "adding" one, and moreover, in relation to closks, expect a + sign to advance the time, like wehat it normally does, and which they do not wish to do. (The lack of a - sign is normal, you have to go forward through the hwole day, by holding the key down - yes it is extremely stupid, but I think you will find it IS the normal way (eg in your BIOS).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"A UK academic has blamed..." That's the story, right there. Enough said. :)
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
...mine, to the extent that I have users, don't even do that much. You've just described exactly what the Bugzilla form typically asks for, and what other bug-reporting systems ask for. Most users just say "It's broken!" Seriously. If I'm lucky, I get "I can't do X."
What I then train them to do is to start by telling me, at the very least, what happened. What was the error message? If there wasn't one, what did it do that you didn't want, or not do that you did? And what was the situation that caused this?
While I really would prefer users who are able to tell me exactly as much information as I need, or at least not take it personally when I cut them off with their story, I'd much rather have too much information than too little.
My favorite example of too little information is from a friend who actually worked in IT, in academia. He once had a professor walk in, put a laptop on his desk, say "Fix it," and walk out. Seriously, these people manage to get PhDs and can't figure out that in order to fix anything, we need to know what's broken -- because with behavior like that, I'd feel perfectly justified by "fixing it" by wiping the OS and installing Linux. (I'd never actually do it, but I'd sure as hell be tempted.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I have seen a very similar UI on my car dashboard. There is a clock and a solitary button to press, naturally the button advances the clock in order to set the time. Equally naturally, one sometimes presses the button unintentionally and has to go 'all around the clock' to set it to the right time again.
Even this is more intuitive than the 'plus sign to add an alarm' as you have a thing and a control. Press the control and it alters the thing. In the fine summary, there is a thing and a control, press the control and get a pop-up that allows you to set up an event only loosely connected with the thing.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I had a great laugh the first time my 10-year-old niece tried to make a phone call using the old rotary phone in my Mom's house (which still works by the way). She kept trying to push the indented 'buttons' instead of leaving her finger inside the hole, rotating the dial to the right, and then releasing it, waiting for it to stop moving,before repeating the procedure with the next phone digit.When I explained the process to her, she got frustrated and impatient and used her Mom's cell instead.
What's wrong with the youth of today? They just don't get it.
On a related note, I just finished watching an old Outer Limits episode--filmed in 1963 with a storyline set in 2030--where the occupants of the futuristic house were chatting over a LIVE VIDEOPHONE (now that's futuristic!), the size of an IBM XT, with the exact same rotary dial as the user interface.
No wonder the generations hate each other.
Yeah sorry about the spain thing, I knew I was going to get tripped up by that!
We'll have to agree to disagree. One mans intuitive is another mans obstacle. Thats the real problem with UI design, you cant reach 100% of the people, but you have to design for everyone.
The Minority you don't reach will only ever consider a design that suits them. Sucks to be in the minority - but I would reiterate, once you've learnt the asterisk means AC (you could put AC on the button, or should that be AA for spanish, or maybe K for german cars!) you wouldn't then proceed to forget it when you switched car, or worse, every time you got out.
Thats what people do with Computer systems, thats why tech support staff get so jaded.
Invaders must die
Why didn't they just use a button that said 'Add alarm'? Because that would be too easy for the latte sipping dickheads who think they're clever because they make their user interfaces 'look nice'. The triumph of form over function.
Good user interface design is easy - all you have to do is drop your ego and find out what your users want, and implement it, no matter what YOU think about it. Sadly, ever since the dawn of WIMP, idiots have been ruining the user interface for millions of users.
I've just taken away my parents' PVR which was bought because their favourite TV programmes usually ran past their bed times - they never used it. The first major hurdle is that it required one set of glasses to see the legend on the remote control and a different set of glasses to read the menu on the TV. Not really a problem for navigating the TV - you remember eventually where the "channel up" and "channel down" buttons are, but the PVR interface actually required identifying speciific buttons for specific tasks (not just up/down/left/right/fire) in response to on-screen menus, so a non-starter. The PVR remote had two very similar red buttons - one for record and one the red teletext button - no end of confusion there, especially when you're trying to offer advice over the phone - and a selection of buttons with curious legends that could only be explained by reference to the handbook. Like other digital receivers it would pop up message occasionally about new channels or new firmware being available - but not in a way that explained what this might mean or what should be done. The UI was sluggish and so when they did press the right buttons often nothing would happen for a while, so they'd press the button again and suddently they'd get two keypresses registered and be confused about what had happened. The EPG was slow and awkward to navigate with no obvious way to go directly to a specific day or time so it was inconvenient to set up a recording of a programme for a few days hence.
You probably have electronic devices with similar issues and get along with them just fine. The real difference is that (some) elderly people don't actually see sufficient benefit in the device to put up with the poor implementation - they've lived long enough without them not to be in thrall to the technology. If it's easier to buy a cheap analogue travel alarm clock, stay up a bit later for the end of the TV programme or wait for it to come out on DVD then they will. It's not worth their effort to wrestle with technology for a marginal return.
The problem is not with old people - it's the rest of us who are prepared to accept poor usability because the gadget is shiny and will perform a neat trick if you learn how to treat it right.The problem won't go away because the current generation has grown up with technology - the stuff they grew up with is going to look quaint and bizarre in a few decades.
The term "add alarm" is programmer's speak: an alarm object is added to a collection of alarms. No wonder people unfamiliar with programming cannot interpret the term correctly.
EVERYONE I have passed my iPhone too for the first time has used their fingernails, and when it didn't work just pushed harder. Even after explaining that they need to use the flesh on their finger they almost instantly forget or ignore my advice.
There are simply so many different functions and possible paths of accomplishing things with computers that manuals will rarely be helpful. In fact, this is what much of the problem is. People are being uncreative and expect to be given instructions about how to do something rather that learn the functionality of the software and solve the problem themselves.
googling this will get you millions of results because oversimplifying things can make them actually more complicated for people who understand the original and dont need giant shiny buttons to do things they previously could do with a click or 2 instead of 6 or 12. if you are going to simplify do exactly that. dont make original options much more difficult to for people that can understand language and simple photo editing options.
I disagree, because young people who use computers today are constantly learning new ways of doing things. If they don't figure out the underlying concepts, then it becomes challenging to learn something new. It's actually more expedient to figure out how a tree-like file system works (even if they wouldn't call it as such) rather than memorize what a folder icon looks like and where it will temporarily take them in the system. They have been learning how to learn for quite some time.
The evidence I point to are the older folks on Slashdot who still keep up with the latest tech updates. It's possible they may have some difficulty adapting (that's just how aging works), but they force themselves to learn the underlying concepts and not simply memorize interfaces.
As long as I don't fall into a simple pattern, hopefully I too will stay as sharp in my autumn years.
Yes and no. Many things you can discover by trial and error, others are a little more cryptic. For example, in my dad's old Renault 18, there was this symbol:
(!) (P)
What the hell does that mean? Oh, it means "Warning! Hand brake is on!" And that's one thing you may have no idea (especially women drivers -- just kidding). Yes, you will learn what it means in the end... but at risk of breaking your car. Why not just a simple text warning? "HANDBRAKE ENGAGED".
Or a little "aladdin lamp"... meaning "oil" (do most people today know that these lamps worked on OIL?).
I wonder if asian cars have the chinese characters instead of icons? Anyway, I'm a fan of descriptive text. I don't like to rely on icons alone. I guess europeans need to do that because of how many languages they have in such a (relatively) small area. But it shouldn't be *that* hard for manufacturers to be able to slide a dashboard template for different languages. I say "should", because it is hard to disassemble the dashboard.
How about this: Send Grandma to a Computers 101 class. I'm sure there's some local senior's club or jr college that offers classes. That really is the best solution, because there is NO POSSIBLE WAY any UI design is going to be able to make up for lacking an entire lifetime of computer experience and training.
This is a simple training issue, not a UI issue. Pretending it's a UI issue will result in nothing but a fast race to the bottom.
My
I have an iPhone. And there is no Add. There is [+]. Apparently you have used the iPhone enough to interpret that as Add. Next to that you also recognize that you are presented with a list of alarms. To someone new to the iOS interface, neither might be apparent. This is what TFA tries to point out.
The problem is that they are trying to set an alarm before understanding the iOS interface, and thus don't realise they need to add an alarm instead of setting it.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
I think you exactly point out where the problem lies.
The reason for icons, is that otherwise they would have to make lot's of different versions for different languages. Some countries in Europe even speak multiple languages. Next to that words with the same meaning have different sizes in different languages. This leads to issues with designing the UI, not just in cars, but on computers as well.
For example, a lot of people here say to just use "Add" instead of the [+] that iOS uses, but in my native Dutch, it would become "Toevoegen", which would require a much larger button.
The problem with symbols is that they are culture specific too, but designers often don't realise that.
I've written programs for users in multiple countries, and getting internationalization right it very very hard. And We only had customers in some European countries.
The other solution, that manufacturers would make a specific version for each culture and language is probably not feasible either.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Seriously though, you don't know what snow is? That's just silly.
I used to live in the tropics until I was nine, and have lived in the Netherlands since. And I can confirm that this is indeed something that would not be obvious. I knew the concept of snow, and that it turns things white and you can make snowmen out of it. What people didn't tell me, is that it consists of snowflakes, and more importantly, that it is cold.
The first time it snowed after I moved to the Netherlands, and I picked some of it up, I was shocked how cold it was.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
But then that would need to be translated into X languages. And have have controls that adjust to the size of the words in different languages.
Internationalization is what makes icons so attractive. And of course that you can fit more in a small space, of known size, so use pixels for something else.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
cell phones do X languages anyway, yours probably has 8 or more to choose. I don't think words take more space than the usual big ugly icons in my phone
It has little to do with being elder. There is a whole cohort of digibetic younger people who call their slighty more computer-savy brother (me) as soon as things get more complicated than opening a Word document (and even then...)
The real reason is that interfaces are the products of what I call "ITistics", a special form of Autistics. Since 99% of the Slashdotters is ITistic, it is no surprise many here won't accept that pushing a plus-sign and in that way "adding an alarm clock" is ITistic (and indeed, autistic). For a programmer, used to thinking in modules and object oriented language, "adding" something makes sense. For "normal" people, it doesn't.
You see the same with geeks who insist that an OS or software with command-line language is superior to a point-and-click GUI. For an ITistic, it is certainly superior. For everybody else, it is not, as command-line operations are not intuitive at all, and it involves remembering a lot of different commands. Which the average non-ITistic doesn't want to: they just want to be able to operate something by pushing an option.
Of course, the typical slashdot geek will not get at all what I write above. Which only points out that ITism is a real cognitive affliction: they really will not see the problem.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem delendam esse
I tell it to the old and young alike.