The Case for ElderUX (or ‘Designing for Old Folks')
When a 90-year-old visits your website or mobile app, that’s good reason to smile. Many senior citizens are set in their ways, so congrats on whatever you did right to get their attention. To keep them coming back is your next challenge.
That’s where user experience design specifically for older adults (what I call “ElderUX”) comes into play. Older adults start to lose hearing, eyesight, motor control and memory as early as the 50-year mark. By 2030, almost 20% of the U.S. population will be over 65 — that’s double the percentage of seniors in this group today. [Source: www.aoa.gov/Aging_Statistics/]
Some websites excel at ElderUX, namely: Lumosity.com and APlaceForMom.com (APFM). However even their sites built for older adults have minor flaws, most that can be easily addressed.
Vision & Hearing (Accessibility)
Both the Lumosity and APFM websites do a great job of using large fonts, instilling user trust by making the site easy to read, search, and understand. Both sites also display entertaining animated videos describing their products. However kudos goes to APFM’s animation, which uses medium-font words/phrases more effectively in its video to enhance the user experience.
Each site presents minor legibility issues by using font sizes smaller than 16 pixels, which may be an issue for some, especially for responsive sites with words that appear very small on mobile phones. The APFM primary navigation bar also breaks the ElderUX rule of avoiding blue for important interface elements. Even worse, this nav bar uses dark blue (on medium blue) to indicate which section you’re looking at. Many users can’t see the contrast between these two blues. So users click the nav bar’s links blindly, without obvious validation of which link they just clicked on. A color change can easily fix this.
Devices (Accessibility)
Although seniors today prefer tablets over phones, this may change as post-baby boomers grow older. Many have gotten used to finding everything they need on their mobile phone.
As a rule, developers today should avoid small-screen devices (i.e., mobile phones) when designing for older adults. Currently, many older adults have purchased tablets, which they’ll hold onto longer than your average user. But start developing your responsive design eye now so you can make Mom’s cell phone more user-friendly for next year.
Motor Control (Mobility)
A minor mobility nuisance exists with the buttons displayed underneath APFM’s animated video. The email and embed buttons are currently too close for elderly users to easily click with their finger. Larger button size is one fix; but adding space between buttons will make this task a lot less frustrating, even for someone my age.
APFM makes data entry very easy on its website by reducing the distance between form fields in its Senior Care Calculator (www.aplaceformom.com/senior-care-resources/cost-of-care) and displaying big “Use Average” buttons. Unfortunately these close form fields and location drop down menus don’t transfer well to my iPhone.
Most of us will experience a gradual decline in accessibility, mobility, and/or cognitive functioning starting at age 50. That’s why websites that adhere to common ElderUX rules will beat the competition every time. Give our elders the respect they deserve; they’ve earned it.
My next blog will look at Lumosity’s adherence to ElderUX rules for cognitive functioning. Got any favorite websites for ElderUX? Let me know what you like about ’em.
[Source of ‘ElderUX Rules’: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/02/designing-digital-technology-for-the-elderly]