Design + UX Research:
Designing for Older Audiences
Applying these best practices now will pay off in the future.
This story was co-written by both Nate Rodriguez (Sr. UX Researcher at The Zebra) and myself (Product Design Manager at The Zebra). Inspired by a talk our design team hosted during Austin Design Week 2018.
As The Zebra has evolved into the nation’s most comprehensive website for car insurance quotes, our product has started to reach a wider audience. Because of this, it is more important than ever to have a product that is accessible and easy to use for everyone.
While universal design is always our target, the scope of this article will focus on how we create products for users over the age of 50. When we first started, we assumed our target audience skewed more towards millennials and the younger generations. However, our data showed that the average age of our users is between 40–45.
When we first started, we assumed our target audience skewed more towards millennials and the younger generations. However, our data showed that the average age of our users is between 40–45.
We realized that we were not targeting the right types of people for our research studies and began to look for participants that better matched our actual users. We also learned that the population in the United States is aging rapidly and according to the US Census Bureau, older adults will outnumber children by 2030. Taking that into account, and the fact that 76.2% of the US population has access to the internet, our product going forward must be designed with older users in mind.
Everyone is Shopping Online — Not Just Millennials
To better serve our older customers, we wanted to better understand what this particular audience needs from our product. We started thinking about ways to improve our design to make sure our product was functional and easy to use. We began testing with participants who matched our target audience and learned a lot about what we were doing right, but more importantly, what we could be doing better.
We learned our users are increasingly using mobile devices to do most of their shopping, including shopping for insurance. They told us that as they get older and the devices get smaller, it is getting harder and harder for them to use certain websites.
This made us think about the future and the needs of our users as they age and some of the challenges they will face. No one is Benjamin Button and as we get older, our bodies don’t work like they used to.
We started thinking about what physical challenges people face as they age and came up with four main areas to focus on:
- Vision,
- Hearing,
- Mobility,
- And cognition.
1. Vision: Testing color contrast and legibility
Vision is one of the first senses that declines as we get older. When vision starts to go, so does contrast sensitivity, color perception, and near-focus vision — making it difficult to read web pages, among other things.
What does this mean in practice? It means we need to use legible fonts and test colors for contrast. For example a san-serif font like Roboto is easier to read than a cursive font like Lobster. Best practices for font sizes include ensuring your body copy is at least 16-18px and only using smaller sizes if necessary. At The Zebra, our smallest font size is 12px across all devices and is mainly used on labels after they’ve been filled.
The Zebra re-branded about a year ago and our focus was making sure it was accessible for everyone. To do this, we started by making our product more visually accessible. We began with the easy things, like using legible fonts at legible sizes, and use of good color contrast. Then, we tested every color in our design system and created easy to follow guides to help everyone use our colors and fonts correctly. There are many great resources to test your colors and text contrast (our go-to page is https://accessible-colors.com.)
2. Hearing: Add captions to video
The ability to hear higher-pitched sounds and separating sounds, like background music, becomes harder as we age. To ensure accessibility, we made sure to provide captions on the videos we produce. We also made sure our users have multiple ways to contact us, not just a phone number. However, if someone does want to give us a call, our number is never buried and is always visible throughout our flow.
3. Mobility: Ensure sufficient click areas
Some other challenges many of us face as we get older include reduced dexterity and fine motor control. In the age of seemingly digital-everything, this can cause problems when using a mouse or trying to hit small tap-targets on a screen.
To tackle this, we made sure all clickable elements were large with enough space around them to avoid clicking on the wrong thing. We also ensured that all clickable elements have a height of at least 48px. We designed for keyboard or search-only use and then tested it with participants to see if it worked. That research showed us that we needed functional and intuitive tabbing to make our product easier to use.
4. Cognitive: Provide shortcuts
Finally, cognitive challenges increase as we age. Challenges like:
- Difficulty concentrating,
- Reduced short-term memory,
- Shorter attention spans,
- And slower information processing.
But we need to remember that these challenges affect people at any age. These challenges make it harder to complete online tasks and to understand important information, this is especially true when shopping for something as complicated as insurance.
At The Zebra, we focus on providing shortcuts to our users whenever possible. For example, in most cases we are able to show your vehicle information, using our trusted 3rd party data partner. This helps users because they don’t have to manually enter their information or remember specific details about their vehicle.
Visually, we use a combination of colors, shapes and text to convey meaning to take the guesswork out of what happens next. For example, to help a user understand they will be going to the next step on our product, we use an easy to find button with clear text explaining next steps and an icon. While information is being filled in our funnel we give clear feedback on progress, using a detailed progress bar and reminders of goals.
Lastly, we make sure we’re using simple, easy to understand language. We write short sentences with familiar words and avoid jargon, slang, and unfamiliar acronyms. For example: “Your insurance game is on point!” was a tagline we used and we learned that our main audience doesn’t understand this terminology and it didn’t resonate with them, so we changed it to better reflect how our audience actually speaks.
Raise awareness and start thinking about the future
We want to create a product that works equally as well for people across generations — from 26 to 62+. A product that takes into account their varying needs.
To help raise awareness we created this accessibility checklist. You can download it and share with your team. We also recommend taking a look at your data and imagining who you users are going to be 10+ years from now.
We put a lot of effort on creating value within our products and sometimes it’s easy to forget that creating value also means adapting your product for what people need now, and not what they used to need. Applying these best practices now will pay off in the future.
