The current foundations of UI are incompatible with most elders

We’ve all heard this before. “UI is like a joke. If you have to explain it you’re doing it wrong”. Well you’re right. But it stops being so accurate on our elders. You see, they come from a time where mistakes were paid in blood. Drama aside. If they weren’t extremely careful using their company’s VERY expensive IBM computer. If they didn’t memorise the manual twice. Even if they simply weren’t fully focused. The smallest mistake could end in irreparable damage to a multi-million dollar machine. There’s no “woops, just press cmd + z”. An error like that meant you should start collecting your things.

Strangely, the lightbulb moment came while seeing Charlotte, a lovely lady with a charming accent, using Twitter. She literally pulled out a stack of paper with usage instructions for the app. A manual if you would. And then, even with the manual, she still hesitated on her actions. This prompted a conversation were we learned she’d seen career costing errors back in her time. Hell, she almost made a few herself. So that got me thinking. Where we have fun in discovering features she is likely feeling stress.

Now, keep I’m mind this is a theory. I’m not cocky enough to think I’m right by just talking to a few people. But I’d definitely like to find out how right or wrong I could be.

What I can say is that I’m happy that by the end of our session Charlotte was getting into all kinds of trouble using Facebook and Twitter without the need of manuals. We even learned how to use Facebook Live.

Communication is the number one use case

Do you know what’s on of the elders most common uses for tech? Communication. How wonderful is that? The ability to connect with anyone in the world at any given time is one of their favourite uses. The Internet really made the world smaller.

Another interesting finding was that Google wasn’t a stranger to them. Many participants were quite proficient at asking Google for solutions. That makes me happy. As “that kid” everyone asks for tech help I’d say they’re more adept than most of my family.

Scammers are real and they’re horrible

But not everything was good news. We all know there are scammer out there in the internet. We’ve seen a few and we know how to avoid them most of the time. Our elderly friends have seen a darker side of this. The Nigerian Prince scam is a funny joke now.

Valerie is a strong and independent woman that lived in Paris for a few years. One day she was home and got a phone call from a “police officer”. He was demanding her bank’s username and password for a criminal investigation. No, this isn’t a joke. After denying the request, the officer got aggressive and started threatening to show up at her home to take her in for questioning. Valerie has my respect for being strong enough to tell the “officer” to get lost.

Now, I know this is not a tech example. But it’s just a small showcase of the things they go through. They get countless emails by “banks”, “insurance companies”, etc. No wonder they prefer physically going to the bank. Next time your grandparents say tech is stressful we should try having a broader perspective.

I’m officially an outspoken supporter of spam filters. Machine Learning teams around the world, whatever you need to stop scams let me know.