I have often sat in design workshops and user research debriefs with groups of people who can’t help but bring their mother in the equation. Pot kettle and black I hear you say (I quote mine repeatedly) and go as far as having a category for her on this very blog.
Below is a picture of a phone from fitage.com.
Do you like it?
Do you think the 60+ person in your life would like it?
I have been lucky enough to do lots of research with the generation that this phone aims to satisfy and, in my experience, our ‘Baby Boomers’ are a very sophisticated bunch.
I have met the occasional < 3 year-old who might think this is quite an exciting little number
Remember: you might think your mother is an old fuddy-duddy who asks you silly questions and uses the wrong terminology in amusing and embarrassing ways, but she is actually a sophisticated, accomplished woman who wants her gadgets to be easy to use AND stylish!
The contents of fitage.com is in German (thanks to my mother for the phone translation) but it just mentions ‘seniors’. There is a world of difference between 60+ and 80+. Does the German ‘neun und sechsziger’ generation want a phone like this? Great that it works with hearing aids but looks do matter. I have done research with people who are visually impaired and they have gadgets that tell them what colour clothes are, doesn’t that tell us something about how much we care about what we carry and wear?
The Voice of BBC Long Melford’s 82-year-old grandmother is always very carefully co-ordinated and her comfortable shoes are not chosen for comfort alone.
Big buttons is an easy call, now try doing big buttons with style. You can do it!
Am I ranting without due cause?
“for her no this very blog.” sounds very Scottish, but I think you meant on 🙂
Absolutely agree.
People who are 60+, 70+, 80+ and even 90+ are not dead yet. They want to use and can appreciate technology and style.
I know this from examples. My aunt started to use PC when she was 84 or 85 (she used MS Word to type letters, articles to local small newspaper, etc.). My other aunt (currently 93) never leaves her home without photo camera. Big doubts she would like THIS phone….. 🙂
I have corrected the typo – thanks Simon!
Pavel – both your aunts sound more than a little impressive and I am sure that they are not the only ones. One of my friends – who is 82 – has just decided that she needs to buy a computer and was asking me what she should get. Unfortunately she has very arthritic fingers but is a prolific letter writer and has decided that a computer will be easier than writing. From an accessibility point of view, how good has voice recognition software got? I haven’t played with it for a very long time and I believe Michelle thinks voice recognition is what will stop her fingers hurting so much.
Will it? Or are there nice keyboards which will be kind on her fingers?
voice recognition: as I know (from what we have tried at work), result is not impressive at all. You have to “train” software to understand you better, but without trainig it’s pretty bad.
Good idea for keyboard: http://www.magicwandkeyboard.com/
[…] Assumption-based design: making choices in your design process based on assumptions about the intended audiences, rather than facts. This happens all the time — often in expressed as “design for my [insert stereotype of older, out-of-touch family member].” Where we imagine how our mum or uncle or whomever would react to our nav bar or wireframe concepts, colour scheme, etc., when faced with it onscreen. This tends to be the situation in organizations that avoid user testing or those that under-value analytics data. (Here’s a great example of the pitfalls of assumptions guiding the design process in another field — an incredibly hokey mobile phone for seniors.) […]