Older adults age at different rates and need different technology at various stages.
2025 scheduling underway.
Here’s a test. Can you look at a list, for example, of technologies that vendor websites claim are aimed at older adults and their caregivers -- and substitute younger beneficiaries or health care recipients? Do designers who develop applications, devices, and websites that appear to target older adults do that exercise of substitution as they proceed from concept to pilot to delivered offering? Was that what was meant in the concept ‘design for all’ in this prescient report ‘Connected Living for Social Aging’ sponsored by AARP in 2011? Per the report’s definition of ‘Design for all’: User experiences that appeal to all age groups, persisting across versions and devices.
What does senior-specific mean? We can tell that app stores and search engines think they know what is meant by ‘senior-specific’. Note the proliferation of apps and websites targeting seniors, and wonder, has the ‘design for all’ concept lost meaning or relevance? Now that user interfaces (think cars, chairs or smartphone screens) can be adaptive/adjustable to the needs of owners from use of a different key in the car or tap on a screen, why create specialized software at all?
Consider further the definition itself. Should ‘design for all’ mean for all people, for all devices or both, as the report argued? Consider this phrase from the report: “design-for-all technologies will provide our own personalized network of devices that recognize where they are through our authorized and turned-on GPS location tracking; they automatically know streets have changed and offer the latest directions—no need to download new maps.” Not easy in 2011, but standard operating procedure today, along with privacy concerns and transformation (not necessarily with our permission) of user preferences into data, along with product and service recommendations.
The advice to vendors from the 2011 report -- did we get what we wanted? Below are the points of advice to vendors derived from 30 interviewees for this document who ranged from academic experts to CEOs to futurists. The guidance was pointed, but was the point achieved? Thoughts welcome!
Takeaway: Niche offerings for seniors remain because the ‘intuitive’ user interface isn’t really and no one wants to be made to feel stupid.
Takeaway: Popping on a new skin (either outside the device or within the software) is quite easy. Paying for new features? For all of the 'free' software where we are the product, many might appreciate a paid version in which the software is the product and users can go back to being, well, users.
Takeaway: Online retail has made the transformation nearly complete, as more stores close, or buy online to pick up in the store replaces shopping. Chatting with a bot, unfortunately, has replaced discussing a product with a person, and customer experience has deteriorated, replaced by (retailer) cost reduction.
Takeaway: Much has been done, but according to Pew, 27% of the 65+ population is not online – theories range from cost, perceived value, and a correlation with lower income and education. And technology deployment is more complicated as devices proliferate – which created more comprehensive training capabilities.
Takeaway: Re-use and redeployment has happened – as for apps, they are a-plenty, including scam apps.
Takeaway: Considering design, including tech, awareness of an aging population is growing as the boomer age wave moves through. But senior-friendly design and testing of general market consumer products (not just tech) is under the radar, if it is happening at all.
Comments
From John Boden via email
Companies that are trying to produce or sell products and services to the elder market need to stop relying on what their “young” employees and consultants are telling them and get their advice from some real “elders” and then listen closely to what we have to say.
What they are doing now does not seem be working so well. So what have they got to lose?
From Jon Warner via LinkedIn
Laurie Orlov always writes thoughtful blog articles and this one on design for aging or hashtag#longevity markets is no different, but the situation is even more woeful than she suggests. Not only is hashtag#technology and solution design poor or non-existent for older adults but in many cases, we are going backward by trying to envelope huge swathes of people without thinking of their particular needs. For example Boomers in the US are a 77 million population with incredible diversity! How can we, therefore, better educate startups and innovators to appreciate how to best tackle this challenge intelligently?
Perhaps we should start to create a curated list of poor or sub-optimal design for older adults (or ones that are just plain embarrassing) as examples to ideators and entrepreneurs to avoid!
From Adam Sobol via LinkedIn
Great article! Though, I think many of us are missing the point. We continue to harp on bad design, poor design, and all the challenges of designing for seniors, without suggesting something in its spot. It's like giving someone feedback, without offering any suggestion for next time. What really needs to happen, is for someone to take a shot at creating guideline/framework for designing for older adults. Something that every senior care company could standardize on, very similar to NIST controls. There may be research that is out there already that could help to lay the groundwork for something like this. I believe that only talking about the negative parts of existing designs isn't beneficial, there must be a metric or something to compare it to that everyone can be standardized on. If we want more people (young and old) working in this space, we have to be more positive and think about standardization or frameworks to build technologies that are beneficial.
From Betsy Jones via LinkedIn
It could be that a "questions to ask" list would be helpful, but Jon's earlier comment about the wild diversity among older people is well taken. How could one develop a standard that could meet the needs of people who might vary in age by 50 years and who have a wide (and perhaps changing) set of capabilities, preferences and needs? It seems to me that a use-case scenario such as major industrial design firms use might be beneficial.