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Introduction
Melissa: Ok, I am here with Camilla Meek, who is going to share with us a little bit about UX and older adults, and we're going to have a conversation here. So I would love for you to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about who you are.
Camilla: And hey, Melissa, my name is Camilla Meek, and I have been working around the web space since almost the beginning of, I would say, e-commerce, basically. So the initial attempts at Fortune 100 companies to bring business online and enable business through the Web. So I also worked as a webmaster for higher education, and in particular, I worked for a school of education that was very strong on special education. So I had to do a lot of work around understanding accessibility and also educating other users around that importance. So that's sort of my background.
And then more recently, I would just say that I'm 66 years old as of last week. And yeah. And so I have I can say that I probably represent the older population, although I've I'm probably more web savvy than a lot of people of my age or demographic. And that being said, in my most recent position, I actually worked for the largest financial services company in the country and I worked with people of all ages. But in particular, I had to help people navigate the website to do financial transactions.
So I did a lot of observations about how people of different ages were able to handle that type of high stakes interaction on the Web, where a lot of times people are stressed about, Am I doing the right thing, am I going to cause something bad to happen?
So that's sort of where I came up with this idea of doing, you know, talking to you a little bit more about the needs of older users, especially now that so much business is being conducted online.
Melissa: Yeah, that's a lot of rich experience. So I'm psyched that you're here to share a little bit with us, and I'd love for you to take it away and tell us some of the observations you've seen or common characteristics.
Observations from Camilla
Camilla: Well, there are some things that are just so common sense. I feel like they almost don't need to be said. But I think in this context, they do need to be said. And that is that that older users of your website are going to be needing perhaps more clarity than you you might think they need in terms of doing transactions and just visibility and use of, the usability of, the elements of the site.
So with that in mind, I would say and this just happens to be one of the things I notice a lot, where a company has branding and they're they have sort of their color palette and they try to implement that color palette into a website. And literally, you can see things like green font and this goes beyond just websites, it's also email marketing a lot of times.
For instance, so green is their main color, and they're using green font. That's not very readable for a lot of people, so that is one of my pet peeves in that dark grey or black should be the go-to font color. I don't know if there's any exception around that. And you maybe could speak to that, but I, I feel pretty strongly about that. That's just a basic you know, when you try to read a book, it's usually printed in black, right?
Melissa: Yeah. I think you're right on, 100 percent on that. There are definitely colors that just shouldn't be used for links. Typically green and orange, and certainly not body text/ You're right, it's a problem not only for older adults, but anybody with low vision, and I was just reading some adult UX literature just recently talking about we start aging at age 20. And I was like, wow, that's really young before you get out of colleges you are aging. So even by 40, your eyes are well-used and may also be affected by vision issues.
Camilla: Absolutely. And then along with that comes sort of for older users, a lot of times we're not aware of the tools that are built into browsers now, really a pretty standard that didn't used to be, about sizing of text. And so that's another thing that you want to always be aware of. I mean, people aren't going to always know or they and I'm not familiar with all the browsers' capabilities, but they're not always going to know that they can just do a control plus and make the font larger. So you if you can provide options, in terms of sizing, I think that's that can be very helpful. And that goes along with, again, any kind of accessibility. You want to make sure that there's a sizing option.
Melissa: That makes a lot of sense. And we should definitely say that the minimum size is typically 16 pixels for any kind of "em"s is what they use nowadays. But it's similar in the sense that you just need to make sure that that's even for like 20-year-olds. Like I put like fourteen point font or pixels in front of 20 somethings and they're like, oh, this is a little small. So 16 is kind of bare minimum. And then occasionally on an icon, you might see a little bit smaller font, but it's connected to a picture. Right. Yeah, but yeah, bump it up. Right. Not everybody knows how to do that necessarily.
Camilla: Exactly. People really older users don't have a lot of facility with that kind of tool. And I will say from my experience in my last job, talking to a lot of people doing transactions, for whatever reason, older users try to do a lot of things on tablets. Which are probably the least flexible in terms of a lot of the, you know, the tools that we take for granted in a browser, for instance, on a computer.
Tablets, just a lot of companies are programming there, any kind of functions for like, where you're doing transactions, they're not really tablets aren't the first thing that they test. You know, that sort of like more sophisticated. Yeah, that's what's important to remember. A lot of older people are not going to try to do transactions on a phone. They'll use the phone for information, but they're not going to attempt to do any kind of interaction, even email a lot of times I literally have talked to people who mostly just use phones for phones and they'll web browse some just to get information, but they want to be able to pick up the phone and call somebody if it's a transactional thing. So a lot of times they won't even attempt to do a transaction with their phone.
IS This CHANGING?
Melissa: Do you think that's changing? Do you think that's changed in the last ten years?
Camilla: Slowly, very slowly, but it's and some of it is it's probably the function of whether they're still working, if they're in a business setting or if they have children or grandchildren or helping them understand the different functions on the phone. But of so many people that I know who are my age or older, have iPhones, but literally can't do a lot with them, they're just for pictures and talking to people.
Melissa: Yeah, it's actually pretty amazing. And it's not just older adults, the amount of power we have with some of our devices, but we don't necessarily just kind of use it for the few things that we do. Yeah, you often don't even understand the different things that can do. And that's that's all ages, not just older adulsdt. Maybe, maybe perhaps we could say that younger people might be more likely to explore them, perhaps.
Camilla: Yes. Yeah. And so in my experience, a lot of times I could work a younger user through Web functions on the phone and they would be able to get it eventually. And I have to say that I have had a lot of conversations with younger people who were who could be just as confused by user interfaces for a complicated transaction. So it's not just older people, but I think older people are more reluctant to try new to explore some features.
Melissa: Yes, I think you're absolutely right. There is definitely confusion at all ages. I also notice a difference that when I'm done testing with different groups that, I've noticed that the older the people, maybe at 40 and up, I'm just ball-parking here, they tend to blame themselves when they run into problems. There's a lot of like, "I don't get technology." Or, "I'm sure it's obvious and I'm just missing it." Whereas when I was really young people, they tend to blame the company. This app sucks or whatever.
Camilla: Exactly.
Melissa: That's a big difference.
Camilla: Absolutely. The older people tend to be very apologetic about not being able to follow directions when you're trying to explain something or not figuring things out, and they get easily frustrated. So that is true.
And around that, I just would like to say that I think most older adults have the capability to do complex functions. It's not that they can't. It's just it's the lack of familiarity. And again, going back to the phone or the tablet, the functionality, it's just so condensed, you know, when you're trying to do something that maybe isn't really even designed for a phone, frankly. I think you and I talked about, when we first started talking, was a donation form on a large university site where in order to donate to make a donation to one of the various, many areas of the university or which included a medical center, the dropdown that you had to select from just to make your donation was so long. It was just…
Melissa: Yes, I remember this.
Camilla: It was frustrating. And I, I was, I literally gave up. I just was like, "I can't do this." Dropdowns don't work very well for older adults because it just requires a certain amount of facility with your finger and sensitivity. And likewise, kids can't do that kind of functionality as well. I've seen kids who have problems with that type of functionality.
Melissa: Yeah, we know that any forms on mobile are way more likely to have errors than on desktop or maybe even tablet. But yeah, the small screen that small tap sizes, things like dropdowns, great points. Yeah.
Donation Forms and Older Adults
Camilla: And then the final thing that comes to mind and having worked with non-profits and along those lines of what we just talked about with the donations, there's, I have, you know, taken a look at a lot of sites that have, you know, the ability to make a donation online. And the trends are all towards making donations online and nonprofits rely on that.
But sometimes, a couple of things, one, it's not clearly defined what the steps are to make the donation or to do the transaction, but it could be any kind of transaction, even signing up for a newsletter, which is probably one of the simplest transactions you do on a website, it's really helpful to get a confirmation that you were successful in signing up for the email newsletter, for instance, because you don't always know if you push the right button and submitted it and it's been received. So getting confirmation immediately is really helpful.
The other thing is explaining the steps that are going to be part of the transaction and being very explicit about that is really helpful. I mean, it's to the point of seeing a step-by-step menu or a recipe of how to do the transaction. And then finally, the importance of making sure people understand if you're sending them to a payment site, for instance, that it is part of your user experience and if at all possible, make sure you've branded, excuse me, the payment site with your own brand so that they know they understand or be very clear about, "We are now sending you to X site to make your payment for our organization, that type of thing, because it can be confusing and people are very likely to just abandon the process if they feel any sense of uncertainty about where their payment or personal information is going.
Melissa: Yeah, those are great for everybody, not just...
Camilla: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's something we feel, you know, and I don't know every different payment program that's out there. But I think it's something where they tend to brand it with their own brand and whatever it does, PayPal or whatever. And so it's hard to get your that kind of continuity where you have the flow from your site to the payment site, for instance.
Keep in Mind when Designing for Older Adults
Melissa: Yeah and that makes a lot of sense when you have heard all kinds of great information. I'm curious if you have any kind of. Any kind of mantra or phrase that people need to just keep in mind as they're designing for older adults? I interviewed somebody I guess was earlier last week, and she kept saying, "Just keep it simple, keep it simple for us," and I thought that was a good one. But do you have anything else people can keep in mind?
Camilla: I think along those lines, it's just about, I've always I've always felt it was important to be very explicit about any type of transaction on a site. And "explicit" that, I don't know what, to unpack that, it's almost like, without being condescending, explain everything that you can that might be a question or questionable, and then, to your expertise, to test and to consider feedback even if a lot of times people can't articulate what it is that they're having a problem with. So try to be open-minded about the fact that people are expressing frustration and then, you know, you could do some testing or try to ask some open-ended questions so you can get better information from them. So definitely listen to your users. I think that's very important.
Melissa: There you go. "Listen to your users. Yeah, that's the phrase I love to hear. Thank you!
Camilla: Thank you, Melissa.
Melissa: All right, I really appreciate you giving us some of your time. I'm grateful, bye-bye, thank you!
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