Designing a user interface for the elderly — an overview.

When we look at a user interface, we tend to take what we see for granted. We focus on the way it looks. The colours, the fonts, the composition, the imagery.

What we don’t necessarily think about is how this would appear to someone with a visual impairment, memory loss or dementia. None of the elements mentioned above would matter — they would actually make things more difficult.

I recently had the task to design a user interface for the elderly. An interface that involved text, numbers, menus and quite a lot of different settings.

Designing that interface meant looking at things with a different perspective. The main objective was to make everything as simple, clear and legible as possible.

Although difficult at first, the exercise was surprisingly refreshing.

Each screen had to be looked at with a new, different eye. An eye that struggles to see the contrast between two colours, the details in an intricate icon, the subtlety of a decorative font.

The content had to be stripped back and delivered in a simple design. But simple does not mean minimal — there was no room for ultra light Helvetica or millennial pink.

Typography

Text was a very important element of the work as it made almost 100% of the interface. I discovered that there are a few rules that are good guidelines for using typography in an interface aimed at senior users.

• The obvious one: it should be big. The recommended minimum size for a font is 12pt. Anything smaller than that will not be picked up by the older eye.
• Use upper and lower case. It might be tempting to write everything in upper case — it feels bigger and easier to read. It is like talking louder to someone that has a bad hearing. It appears that using upper case at the beginning of a word followed by lower case letters helps to make it more legible, due to the variations in height.
• Do not use italic. Italic font is said to be 18% harder to read than regular font.
• Watch your stroke weight. Variations in the width of each part of a letter makes it more difficult to read. This can be a good argument to focus on sans-serif fonts.

Some typography guidelines for senior users

Colours

No matter how much effort you put in choosing a font and using it, it can be cancelled by the colours it is displayed in. Not enough contrast between the colour of the background and the colour of the text will make it very hard to read, as if the two colours were blending. An easy way to check that contrast is to use a Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyser. The ratio between the 2 colours must be at least 4.5:1, and this is calculated using the “hex code” of each colour. Ideally, the luminosity contrast ratio reaches 7:1 (Level AAA) for the best legibility. Although it sounds like a complicated math problem, there are some easy tools online that will tell you if the colours you have chosen pass the test or not.

Some examples of luminosity colour contrast ratios

Finally, creating the best user interface for older users is about finding the right balance between text and empty spaces. Overcrowd the screen with a large amount of oversized text and all the important information will get lost.

The importance of empty spaces

Going through the process of creating a user interface for the elderly was challenging but brought a lot of satisfaction. It was a great task to tackle — knowing that adapting technology to the elderly will improve their quality of life and help them remain independent for longer.