Design for the "older folks"

Patrick Caldwell
Designing for the Older Folks
There are many stages to a man's life.
In the 1st stage, he is young and eager, like a beaver.
In the 2nd stage, he wants to build things, like dams, & maybe chew down some trees.
In the 3rd stage, he feels trapped, and then 'skinned.''
I'm not sure what the 4th stage is.“
Jack Handey

AGENDA
1. Meant as an working / interactive discussion, not simply a
presentation
2. Discuss some of the age related changes to:
Cognition
Vision
Movement Control
2. Discuss ways to design GUI’s and user interactions to account
for or to minimize these effects

CAVEATS
 There seems to be many schools of thought on what causes these issues.
 There is not even consensus on whether all of these issues exist or the degree to
which they are affected by aging.
 However I suggest that we consider these issues and possible mitigations where
it makes sense for us to.
 Also as importantly, there is no one way or single checklist to design.

DEFINING “OLDER”
 I am not intending or offering a clear cut definition of the term “older”
 Severe signs my only show up in mid to late 60’s, but most follow a
progressive decline. One study showed memory loss beginning in the 20’s,
 There is also no one path all folks follow, as individuals are all different

OUR USERS
Our Users
 The image below shows an SEG member age distribution chart (1999).
 Assumption - the whole curve has moved 8 years to the right. If so, the median age
is now 53.
You ≠ Our Users
• Even though some of us look like them, we are not our
users
• Some of us are younger, or less “afflicted”, than our users
• All of us, in this building, are more or less comfortable with
technology, which is not something you can say about all of
our users

“TYPES” OF MEMORY
There are many types of memory and cognition and age effects them differently
 Short-term memory – (working)
 Long-term memory (Semantic)
 Prospective memory
 Dynamic visual attention
 Spatial cognition
 Language comprehension
 Procedural knowledge
 Attention

SHORT TERM – WORKING MEMORY
 There is a well documented decline here. Recent research has shown
this may be associated with an inability to filter out surrounding
distractions, not problems with focusing attention.
Design Considerations:
 Reduce the cognitive load
 Minimize the number of text fields in your interfaces down to the
absolute minimum necessary.
 Minimize the number of click/keystrokes/gestures necessary to
accomplish actions in your interface
 Multi-tasking techniques, letting them continue with their work while
tasks take place in the background.
 Break down tasks into logical pieces
 Provide feedback on task completion. “Did I just export that or not?”
 Reduce response times. The longer user has to wait, the longer he
has to pay attention or hold a context in mind
 What has just been perceived and what was currently being thought about.

LONG TERM – SEMANTIC
MEMORY
 Long-term memory of acquired knowledge (vocabulary, rules of language,
historical facts)
 Permanent storage – (learned and skilled behaviors)
 Not shown to decline with “normal” aging
 Make use of these common learned experiences to enhance ease–of –use
 Example might be reusing concepts from when geoscientists used paper maps,
etc.

PROSPECTIVE MEMORY
 Remembering to perform an action in the future
 Time based - at a certain time or after a certain amount of time has passed
 Event based - after a certain event has occurred
 Declines for time based are much greater than for event based
 Don’t do time based
 Ensure that an event is available to trigger the event based reminder

DYNAMIC VISUAL ATTENTION
 Ability to integrate from a large visual space, information that cannot be
comprehended in a single glance
 Relates to how users scan their environment and focus attention from one
location to another.
 Each of these events follow in sequences – scan, focus, reorient and scan
again. Each part takes time and attention resources.
 Under ideal laboratory situations, it has been shown that it can take up to 1
second to reorient attention from one item to the next.
 Older adults require more time to orient attention from one location to the next
 A related issue is that older adults can be more affected by higher “salient”
items. (Flashing, high intensity, highly contrasted items).
 They tend to rely more on environmental support for memory processes. Rely
on external cues to retrieve information from memory
 Use the smallest possible numbers of things to search through to perform a
task
 Remove extraneous information that might “capture” attention
 Keep consistency so that with experience, elements do not need to be
reviewed each time
 Explicitly provide or point to the next steps

SPATIAL COGNITION
 Ability to manipulate images or patterns mentally or to accurately
represent spatial relationships among components
 Ability to create meaning by manipulating images of the world in which
he exists, and those that originate in their own mind.
 Younger adults outperform older adults here, especially when tasks
included
 New locations
 Requirement of memory for object locations
 Development of sequences
 Don’t require sequence to be remembered, lead the user
 Bring the interface to the user

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
 Ability to interpret verbal information (spoken or written). Includes the
ability to understand individual words, sentences, paragraphs, and to
draw logical inferences that are implied
 Research has shown that older adults create different linguistic
representations of what they read than younger adults.
 Specifically they store “smaller” chunks and consequently require
more “integration”. This in turn requires more short term memory
resources and the issues that that implies.
 Also older adults have more difficulty comprehending language when
inferences are required. If connections between ideas are not explicitly
made, an inference must be made. Again this calls on short term
memory.
 Use the semantic memory advantage by using familiar terms and
labels
 Make connections between concepts explicit

PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE
 Knowledge about how to perform a certain task. Ranges from those
done without active thought (car driving) to those explicit but well-
practiced routines (following a recipe)
 Older adults have issues with:
 Learning new automatic processes
 Inhibiting well learned procedures
 Related but not an aged based issue is that under stressful or multi-
tasked situations users have a harder time inhibiting well learned
procedures
 Make sure that a “new” way of doing something
 Minimizes the interference with existing ways
 Is really important enough, or is such an improvement, to warrant
its “newness”
 If a new procedure or process is introduced, the task needs to be
broken down into its components
 If there are components of a task that can follow well established
practices, we would do well to follow. This is so important because
those procedures that can be carried out on a non conscious level
leave more room for those that do require the limited active conscious
thought

MOVEMENT CONTROL ISSUES &
SUGGESTIONS
Issues
 A lot of research shows control of movement decreases with age
 Older adults vs. younger adults
 take longer to complete similar movements
 Are less precise
 Rule of thumb for estimating movement times is that, on general, older
will be approximately 1 ½ to 2 times slower
 Fitt’s law - The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to
and size of the target
Design Suggestions
 Larger selection areas - Buttons and other widgets (Seismic lines) to
be selected in GUIs should be a reasonable size. Use for important
functions (Big buttons are faster).
 Edges and corners of the computer display ( "Start" button in XP) are
particularly easy to acquire because the pointer remains at the screen
edge regardless of how much further the mouse is moved, thus can be
considered as having infinite width.
 Avoids forcing travel

OTHER CHANGES
Physiological Changes – A decrease in energy levels
• There is clear evidence that aging results in a lowering of androgen levels. (hormones
including testosterone among other)
Hearing Issues
• A recent study found that with the “normal” hearing loss, folks spent more cognition
energy on understanding speech which took away from other cognition tasks.
Brain Sections and their Usage
• Older adults have been shown to use additional brain sections to complete tasks than
younger folks. While this help with basic memory issues, it does not help with the more
complex cognitive tasks.
• As mentioned earlier there is a reduction in the ability to ignore distractions . This is
thought possibly to originate with a reduction in brain activity in the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex decreases. This is actually an issue for cognition, speech, and vision.

VISION CHANGES
 Studies show that with regarding finding it necessary to wear glasses
 Over 45 - 7 out of 10
 Under 45 - 3 out of 10
 Declines in Visual Acuity become noticeable by late 40’s or earlier
 Presbyopia (inability to change the eye’s focal length due to the condition of
hardened, less flexible lenses, coupled with reduced light transmission into the
eye) majority over 40 experience this to varying degrees
 Depth perception affected
 Decreased transmission of light to the receptors in back of the eyes
 Decreased ability to dilate lens
 Yellowing of the lens
 Increased sensitivity to glare
 Some deterioration in the size of the “visual field”
 An apparent slowing in the speed with which visual information is processed
 Early to mid forties – loss of ability to focus on near objects. Makes it more difficult
to focus on text that is displayed in the upper part of the visual field. For those who
wear bifocals, viewing the upper visual field requires craning the head up to read
through the lower bifocal.

VISION SUGGESTIONS
 Delete Unnecessary Items
 Everything must be interpreted – the eye only transmits the sensory
data and it is the brain that has to interpret / sort through
 Easier on the user if details that are not relevant or useful are
removed or relocated. Which brings up the concepts below.
 Progressive Disclosure and / or Progressive Enabling
 Show overviews and hide details until the user requests more detail,
and then to provide only the additional level of detail required.
 Using Perceived Affordances
 Appearance of the device could provide a visual clue to its function
and use.
 Increase Size
 Increase the size of visual objects (font size, icon size)
 Navigation Clues (Where am I, Where did I come from, where can I
go?)
 Indicate where user is at all times. Tie links and dialogs with same
names and reuse of icons
 Repeat info if it is required to make good decisions
 Use the “available space”
 While not a hard and fast rule, we are in a slightly advantageous
situation that our customers often do have more screen space than
other folks. What that can buy us is some breathing room. Not all
elements have to be jammed together with font at 8 pixels. More a
case by case sort of thing.

VISION SUGGESTIONS (CONT.)
Screen Element Placement
An eye mapping image. The “hotter” the color, the
more the eye has viewed and traveled to the spot.
• Most Traveled - The top left corner and then down
• Top left to top right is also noteworthy
• On dialogs we would expect another hot spot to
be down near the bottom global buttons.
Design Suggestions:
• Use these paths to lead users through flow

VISION CONCERNS FOR ALL USERS
Reading on screen is different than reading on paper
 Tests show the following:
 20-30% slower
 User tend to find relevant items by scanning instead of reading
 High probability that what the user misses when scanning the first time, will not
be read later on, even if the entire text is then read
Design Suggestions:
 Create clear and short paragraphs
 Use words that give right associations in the headings
 Important words first
 Avoid long sentences
 Bullet if possible
 Text needs to have high contrast compared to the background color

THE WARM FUZZIES Older adults are more likely to express some trepidation in using new technologies and
computers in general. This is in part a fear of making an error and not knowing how to correct it.
 Studies have shown that the more a user feels in control, the more likely they are to learn new
behaviors and remember ideas and concepts.
Design Considerations
This has obvious and clear design considerations.
Make Actions Reversible
 People explore in ways beyond navigation. Sometimes they want to find out what would happen
if they carried out some potentially dangerous action. Sometimes they don’t want to find out, but
they do anyway by accident.
 By making actions reversible, users can both explore and can "get sloppy" with their work.
Always allow "Undo"
 The unavoidable result of not supporting undo is that you must then support a bunch of dialogs
that say the equivalent of, "Are you really, really sure?" Needless to say, this slows people down.
 In the absence of such dialogs, people slow down even further. A study a few years back showed
that people in a hazardous environment make no more mistakes than people in a supportive and
more visually obvious environment, but they worked a lot slower and a lot more carefully to avoid
making errors.
Always allow a way out
 Users should never feel trapped. They should have a clear path out.

QUOTES FROM INTERNAL FOLKS
 You log another 15 years with mouse and keyboard. I
have "mouse" fingers. And I hate having to reach for
the damn thing.
 I can’t see the screen, I probably need tri-focals.
 What does that say?
 Where was that option?
 I forgot it was Wednesday
 Where are we going?

TAKE-AWAYS
Given that
 There are clearly a wide range of issues that affect older adults and specifically for us, how they interact with
computers and software
 Designing for older folks is good design for everybody
 Things are just going to get worse for our users
We should
 Simplify our interfaces
 Break down tasks
 Consider our users each time we design
Remembering always
 We are not our users
 If we design to what the user knows, expects, their interactions will be smoother and faster
As such we need to
 Test our assumptions / prototypes

 Questions? Comments?
 Design Checklist - http://master-
blaster/usability/Other%20Documents/Design%20Checklist.doc

REFERENCES
Note - This is not being submitted anywhere so the refs below are not
intended to be stylistic correct or comprehensive. None of the info was
original, just the presentation itself.
 Designing for Older Adults – Arthur Fisk, etc. – CRC Press
 http://designinginterfaces.com/ - Jennifer Tidwell
 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx - Windows Vista
User Experience Guidelines
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Handey - Jack Handey
 The seven sins of memory – How the mind forgets and remembers –
Daniel L. Schacter
 http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html - Tog
 A whole bunch of other sources whose details were not ever transferred
from this authors short term to long term storage.

Design for the "older folks"

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