*Opens mom’s phone*
Or, what a wrestling meme can teach us about empathizing with older adults
I saw a meme the other day that made me laugh.
It’s a collage of images from WWE or WWF (clearly, I’m not a wrestling fan) that depicts what happens when someone opens their mom’s phone.
The screen brightness is blinding, the volume deafening, the font size huge. A string of notifications litters the lock screen. And every single app ever opened is running in the background.
Sound familiar? It was to me.
Each time I visit my parents, my mom claims there’s something wrong with her phone.
“My battery is always dead,” she tells me.
I take it and squint as my eyes adjust to the brightness. Then I swipe up, up, up to close each app she’s opened since we last saw each other.
“This might be why,” I say.
As I hand the phone back to her, a deafening noise ricochets through the house. I jump. It sounds as though a plot twist was just revealed. (The noise is coming from inside the building?!)
“What was that?” I ask.
“Dad’s phone,” my mom says, blithely scrolling through her phone. “He got a text.”
It’s a scene most of us can relate to — observing others use technology in a way that is different from our own. As a user experience designer, it is my job to notice these things and understand them. In the case of the example above, I’d want to know why my parents’ iPhone settings are like this and what they communicate about their underlying needs. So I asked them.
“Why’s your screen so bright, Mom?”
“Because I can’t see!” She told me.
“Why’s your phone so loud, Dad?”
“Because I can’t hear!” He said.
Fair enough, I thought. But I wanted to dig even deeper.
My parents, both in their mid-60s, are part of a growing demographic within the U.S. that is often overlooked by product teams. Adults 65 years and older make up 16% of the U.S. population — that’s nearly one in six adults. In 2030, this number is projected to be one in five. As our population continues to age, it is important to learn about age-related declines in vision, hearing, sensory and perception, and cognition, to make sure that we’re designing experiences that work for all users.
When I looked into it, I realized my parents’ preferences were a reaction to the natural aging process.
Take my mom’s screen brightness. As we age, the shape of our eyes change causing a reduction in the amount of light that reaches the retina. Eye specialists estimate that a typical 60-year-old receives one third the light as a 20-year-old. One third! Luckily for my mom, her iPhone can help make up the difference.
And my dad’s deafening text notifications? It’s in response to age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis, which is one of the most common conditions that affect older adults. By the age 65, over half of all men and 30% of all women have some hearing impairment. Most commonly it is caused by a change in the middle ear, but it can also arise from changes in nerve pathways from the ear to the brain, medical conditions, and medication. Luckily for my dad, his iPhone can adjust to a volume he can hear.
What about all those open apps and notifications?
That’s more of a design problem. Over countless software and hardware updates, iPhone has changed how you close apps and the newest version is not discoverable (though I’d argue, none of the versions really were). And rampant and unnecessary notifications are clearly a bigger problem that most people—including me—struggle with. This is a combination of a poor design pattern, bad defaults, and an undiscoverable way to fix things. Though there is progress. iPhone’s new Notification Summary is very promising…as long as you can find it.
So, I’m curious to hear from you. What are some things you’ve observed others doing that made you stop and think? What are some changes you’ve made to your preferences to make your technology work better for you? Let me know in the comments below. And if anyone knows that wrestling reference, I’d be grateful if you told me that too :-)
If you’re interested in learning more about what happens as we age and small accommodations we can make to our products to ensure they work for all users, please read my post: What You Can Learn From Older Adults About Accessible Design.
