Design Humanistic Care: Designed for older users

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

In recent years, the proportion of older people in China and many other countries in the world has continued to grow. Since 1999, the proportion of elderly people in China has reached 10%, which has officially entered an aging society. The sixth census of 2010 showed that the proportion of the population aged over 60 in China has reached 13.3%.

In our country, more and more elderly people live separately from their children and their children are becoming more and more in the field. With the development of information technology and Internet, the elderly also began to use computers, mobile phones, tablets and other electronic products. These electronic products can make it easier for them to communicate with their children and make their retirement life richer.

However, the existing interface design of these devices usually does not take into account the needs of the elderly users, many operations for them is too complex, which also led to their use in the process of encountering many difficulties and problems. As most of the products and designers are still young or middle-aged, their understanding and understanding of the elderly users are very limited, so understanding the elderly users has become a very necessary link.

This article will mainly introduce the elderly user groups who, what they have characteristics, as well as the design of the elderly users of some principles.

Who are the old people?

In our country, the general acceptance of the elderly is defined by the retirement age as the standard, that is, men over 60 years old, women over 55 years of age. In the United States, the federal government has set the age of 65 years to be eligible for social security and medical insurance for the elderly. The United Nations defines older persons by the average life expectancy of the country, generally over 65 years of age in developed countries and over 60 years of age in developing countries. Although countries have different definitions of age for the elderly, the age of 60 or 65 is generally used as the starting ages for older people.

What characteristics do they have?

When people go into old age, they face a decline in abilities such as physical function, visual, auditory, verbal and limb movements, and the aging of perception, memory, attention and learning ability in cognitive ability. These recessions and aging have greatly influenced the use of information technology in the elderly. For example, when they use the computer, mouse tracking and positioning ability of the accuracy will be reduced, can not quickly and accurately click on the target, especially to complete the need to double-click the operation, in the use of mobile phones can not see the screen, press the button, in the handheld device menu easily lost and so on.

1. Body function

(a) Vision: decreased vision, reduced field of vision, decreased color recognition, especially in blue and green, and decreased visual acuity, especially for dynamic objects;

(b) Hearing: Impaired hearing, especially the perception of high tones and local accent tones;

(c) Language proficiency: Speaking is not fluent, will start with meaningless modal particles, such as, er, and so on, and accompanied by more pauses and repetitions;

(d) Physical mobility: slow movement, inflexible fingers and trembling.

2. Cognitive ability

(a) Perceptual ability: Slow perception of external stimuli (visual, vocal), difficulty with incomplete objects or dealing with complex stimuli;

(b) Memory capacity: Need more time to retrieve information from long-term memory;

(c) Attention: decreased attention span, more susceptible to irrelevant information, and easy fatigue in complex tasks;

(d) Learning ability: There is a longer learning curve that takes longer than the young.

How to design for old age users?

In recent years, there have been many for the elderly users of the design of products, from the beginning of the elderly mobile phone, to the elderly design software and services (such as the 2009 Baidu launched the elderly search, October 2013 released the middle-aged and elderly Baidu input method). So, from the perspective of human-computer interaction, what are the design principles to be considered for the elderly users?

1. Provide a variety of input equipment and input methods

Direct manipulation, such as touch-screen and handwriting-recognition devices, can better help older users to complete information entry. Many older users are unfamiliar with the way pinyin and five are imported, and handwriting and speech are the more acceptable forms of input.

2. Interface elements as simple as possible, to avoid animation effects and other interference

As they age, the attention span of older people is reduced, and it is difficult to maintain a long period of attention, and they are more likely to be affected by various visual pollutants on the web than young people, such as background pictures. As a result, simple interface elements are critical for older users. At the same time, try to avoid similar pop-up ads or animations to reduce interference with older people.

3. Display with large fonts and large icons

The elderly due to decreased eyesight, the small font and buttons, as well as poor symbols and image recognition difficulties. Especially for mobile devices such as mobile phones, older people are less likely to see the information on the screen. For mobile devices with a resolution of 640x480 pixels, number 8-12 is the font size for older users. Now some mobile apps designed for the elderly have chosen number 10th or 11th. In addition, large icons, intuitive icon patterns can improve the performance of older users. The recommended icon size for older users is 32 pixels.

4. The copy is easy to understand and easy to remember. Provide clues to help your memory.

Older people have a slower ability to learn new things than young people, especially in computer jargon. Therefore, the corresponding copy design should avoid the use of terminology, to facilitate the understanding of older users. In addition, due to the decline in memory, the elderly on the internet often feel lost, some elderly people will find the previous access to the page. In this case, providing older people with the ability to automatically record access history, or providing them with clues that help them remember, will be very helpful for seniors to successfully complete their tasks.

5. Let the old people feel the safety and stability of the product

Older people tend to be very sensitive to personal situations and money-related information. They have a low level of trust in the Internet. In addition, when they use the equipment and software, they also worry that some of their operations will "break" the product and dare not continue to operate. Therefore, the design of the product should consider for the elderly users to create a sense of security and stability, so that they feel more comfortable and bold to use.

Reprint please specify from "Baidu Mux"