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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.
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?
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.)
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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.
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.
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.
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.