
Creating Online Environments That Work Well for Older Users - imgabe
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/11/online-environments-older-users/
======
dehrmann
> I prefer text over video because I can absorb and retain information faster
> by reading than by watching YouTube

I'm in my mid-30's and generally agree. The number of five-minute Youtube
tutorials for something I can read and grok--and I'm not a fast reader--in 30
seconds baffles me. And they rank higher than text in search results.

~~~
j45
YouTube doesn’t represent video as a medium for communicating effectively very
well.

Why? On problem with YouTube video is it’s less and less effective when there
is incentiveization to increase the length of videos for ad slots.

Take a 2 minute video and turn it into 10.

How long do we wait for the 30 or 60 seconds of a YouTube video that we’re
really after? Too often a few minutes.

~~~
dehrmann
Reminds me of watching Mythbusters.

~~~
Wistar
Bingo! There is an ever-growing number of shows that manage to take a
60-second concept and turn it into a 10-minute bore through endless empty
detours and pointless "interview" format interjections. "How The Universe
Works" is a prime example of this tedious format. A little decoration is fine,
but, in general, I want to watch stuff more like the BBC's excellent Jim Al-
Khalili-hosted shows.

------
signal11
Poor contrast (gray on gray) is a big problem, as is tiny text. Not everyone
has 20/20 vision -- many people, even with glasses or contacts, don't, because
they have uncorrectable vision difficulties -- their doctors will not
recommend surgery because the risk/reward isn't worth it, or simply because
there is no cure (lots of eye conditions end up diagnosed as 'idiopathic',
medical-speak for 'unknown').

Designers with 20/20 vision reading this -- please consider asking around to
see if you can find a tester who doesn't have 20/20 vision. Alternatively just
check for contrast and maybe view at 75% zoom and see if your design is still
readable (Amazon is surprisingly usable at 50%).

------
sys_64738
"Part of the reason why Amazon.com has taken over the retail world is because
over the last decade the user experience has remained consistent and
predictable."

This. The number of times I've seen somebody think they're doing the right
thing by "redesigning" a web interface is absurd. Don't do it.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I find Amazon.com to have turned into a mess. It's very difficult, if not
impossible, to search only for items sold by Amazon.com. And on the product's
page itself, it's confusing to figure out who is selling it. I'm pretty sure
they keep moving it to confuse people.

~~~
Cougher
And that mess of a model is being emulated by vendors like Walmart. One of the
advantages of Walmart is that I can get in my car and go there today, but
they've destroyed their own advantage by making it harder to see what your
local store has in stock.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Yes, hence I prefer to use target.com and staples.com and bestbuy.com.
Supposedly target.com is going that way too though, which would suck.

The good news is many manufacturers now allow you to purchase directly from
their website.

------
every
As a certified "aged one" of seven decades I'm familiar with this. I think of
it as simply another accessibility issue. I believe it is unreasonable to
expect designers to adhere to any particular standard. They have stuff to sell
and audiences to please and since the old often fall outside that demographic,
they can be safely ignored. I think it is more important for the older user to
have tools that can mitigate the situation as needed: the ability to easily
adjust screen resolutions, increase contrast or switch to a plain text display
without distractions. I would be happy with that...

~~~
dgzl
My grandma owns a tax consulting business and began using computers in the age
of Dos. Over the years I would end up with her old computers and that's
essentially how I became familiar with them when I was young. About the time I
graduated with my CS degree, I realized something.... My grandma isn't
actually that capable with computers. Even though she's literally been using
them longer than I have, she had only really been performing a few tasks
beyond get work, and never really spent time using or learning the nuances of
computers and operating systems. I think she never really caught on to the
changes Windows and web browsers made over the years, and she just stuck to
her work. Now, you might not tell her apart from someone who just started
learning.

~~~
jes5199
that feels, to me, like a real failure of our field. What other tool can you
use every day for 30 years and still be a novice at?

~~~
confidantlake
Most of them. I use a toilet every day and have no idea how it works except
for I push the button and my shit goes away.

~~~
noman-land
To be fair, the toilet hasn't changed much in the last 30 years but computing
has drastically changed.

~~~
Wistar
I think toilets have changed a lot. I have a Toto toilet that uses something
like .7 gallons a flush and I am fairly sure is easily capable of flushing a
cat or, at least, a large russet potato.

30 years ago a toilet needed 5 gallons and would clog if you used more than 12
inches of toilet paper.

~~~
speedplane
> I have a Toto toilet that uses something like .7 gallons a flush and I am
> fairly sure is easily capable of flushing a cat

I think you owe it to this forum to provide a citation.

~~~
Wistar
Fair call and I was wrong. I have two, one is the Toto Drake II and uses 1.28
gallons per flush. The other is an Aquia IV dual flush which uses either 0.8
gals or 1.0 gals per flush.

[https://www.totousa.com/aquia-
iv-1g-toilet-10-08-gpf](https://www.totousa.com/aquia-iv-1g-toilet-10-08-gpf)

~~~
speedplane
I was more interested in the cat claim.

~~~
Wistar
That's just a guess. I don't have a cat to test it with and I like my russet
potatoes too much to try and flush one.

------
politelemon
Well written with simple and clear explanations. I found this as a timely
complementary/addon to another recent HN thread, "The modern web is becoming
unusable" :

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848468)

Coincidentally, some of these principles are similar to what we have to apply
for our B2B software, as a lot of the target audience are in a similar age
group as author, continuing to work on older hardware. Having to continuously
explain this to young developers entering the workforce is not easy, as the
implications of various tech decisions and their impact on customers is not
always obvious to them.

------
8bitsrule
A useful addon for people with vision problems is a text/background contrast
stretching algorithm. And/or an addon which can be adjusted for darkness and
color prefs. One example of each for Firefox:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-
contrast...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-contrast-
fix/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-
backgrou...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-background-
light-text/)

~~~
mikro2nd
I think the article addressed this. Any time the reader has to reach for an
add-on or click some other button to make your site readable, they're more
likely to just go elsewhere. After all, quit a bit of the article talks about
font sizes and colour contrasts -- both easily fixed by flipping to Reader
Mode (I assume Chrome has something similar?) but really, how often do I do
that? Hardly ever... the reading matter has to be _reeeally compelling_ for me
to bother with that.

Any friction at all is still a friction.

~~~
8bitsrule
I hear ya. And I _think_ that web accessibility has gotten better in the last
year. But many sites are still squint-ville.

Yep, Reader is really great for seeing the main article on a page, no
question. But sometimes there's a lot left aside. And you just need a little
help seeing it.

Take a look at the 'Dark/Light' addon, I've used _all_ day _every_ day for
over a year. _Very_ little fiddling involved. _You_ get to set the background,
text, and link colors for _everything_. Finito, all problems solved (apart
from using control-scroll to zoom font-size).

------
RenRav
I usually hit the Reader View button within firefox if a page is unreadable.
Returns a standard looking plain webpage, black text on white background at
whatever font size I have it scaled up to.

Google's text-only cached results also help sometimes.

~~~
mrob
I usually hit the Reader View button even when it's already readable. I'm not
the slightest bit interested in what some designer thinks the page should look
like. Even if they come up with something good, it's still inconvenient
because it's different.

Reader View still has gray text though, unless changed with userContent.css:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853840)

------
lowercased
Maybe we could have 'creating video content that works well for older users'
too... ?

I've got a 47" TV - typically sit around 7-8 feet away. Many - probably most -
tv shows and movies that will add text (spy thriller movies,
date/locations/years, etc) invariably use incredibly small fonts, and seem not
to care about contrast.

Small white text on a picture of a cloudy sky is simply unreadable. It doesn't
matter how close I sit - it's essentially white on white. #f6f6f6 on #fdfdfd.
This is unreadable, but movie and tv producers seem perfectly OK with this
trend.

------
codyogden
These seem like good recommendations for midlife to older age group. I really
wish we had more user research that backs up some of these recommendations.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on text polarity readability (dark-on-light
vs light-on-dark), and the color/text recommendations seem to follow the
findings I’m seeing in that area. It’d be interesting to see a larger study
with greater than 20-40 participants with detailed age group breakdowns.

~~~
mikro2nd
It would also be good to bear in mind that First World demographics are
already and increasingly skewed toward older age groups.

------
withinboredom
Something this article completely misses: double-clicking. I don't know how
many bugs I've fixed over the years that were simply caused by double-clicking
even though every single developer around me didn't believe that could be the
cause.

Older people double click on things, even though my sample size is small, it's
100% of them. My Grandma, the owner of a startup I used to work at, my
Grandma's friends, etc...

------
toastal
Old man Linux is the vibe I'm striving to live for; keep holding onto that 4GB
laptop.

~~~
randycupertino
> Old man Linux

^ that would be a pretty decent HN username!

------
Cougher
How about a readable notification bar for Androids? It would have helped me
see that my charger cable was bad before I ventured outside in the cold with
no way to recharge my dead phone.

