I watched my dad - a fine craftsman - utterly fail to comprehend pointing and dragging with a computer mouse when introduced to one in his late 60s. My mom would end up printing out emails for him to read. She, enthusiastically adopting this new technology in the early 2000s when she herself was in her early 60s, gradually lost the neuroplasticity to adapt to new things, and clung to her Windows XP laptop (32 bit) until that was obsoleted by Gmail POP/SMTP access going to Oauth, which the obsolete software couldn't accommodate.
It was still possible to teach her Whatsapp, SMS and Gmail on an Android smartphone when she was around 80, but that was the window of opportunity closing; by a couple of years later, while she could still use those skills (and still had the finger dexterity and vision to do it) nothing new would go in. This was an issue when her hands got less steady and she sometimes would tap or click the wrong thing and then get confused. The concept that a message, ever so slightly clumsily tapped so the tap was seen as a right swipe and therefore "archive" was getting difficult.
So it goes with old folks. At one point someone got her a "Doro Phone Easy", a retro flip phone with big buttons and simplified UI. She never took to that one, but I can see the point of it.
And why not just set up your elders with tech that they are familiar with? You can take an old landline phone - even a rotary dial one! - and plug it into a VOIP adapter and register that with, say, voip.ms, and provide the old familiar calling experience. Didn't work for my mom, because long before becoming uncomfortable with technology, she was already deaf enough to not be able to hold phone conversations - so email was crucial to her.
As for iphones and confusion. As they got more and more locked down, they didn't just get locked down against purse snatchers and such. I've seen several otherwise still fine iphones become ewaste because the giver couldn't figure out how to unlink them from "Find my phone" or activation lock or whatever it's called. These are people who can't fathom the difference between their Google account password and their Apple password. Not old people. Just people who can't give a crap about any of that, they just have a phone that someone helped them set up, and it works and that's that. That was one of Steve Jobs's talents - to see technology as a neurotypical non-geek sees it and make it work for them.
>So it goes with old folks. At one point someone got her a "Doro Phone Easy", a retro flip phone with big buttons and simplified UI. She never took to that one, but I can see the point of it.
We've got to keep churning UX constantly, for no reason whatsoever. The elderly be damned, usability be damned! What matters is that UI conventions always change and often get worse, and most importantly that this happens for no reason whatsoever.
It was still possible to teach her Whatsapp, SMS and Gmail on an Android smartphone when she was around 80, but that was the window of opportunity closing; by a couple of years later, while she could still use those skills (and still had the finger dexterity and vision to do it) nothing new would go in. This was an issue when her hands got less steady and she sometimes would tap or click the wrong thing and then get confused. The concept that a message, ever so slightly clumsily tapped so the tap was seen as a right swipe and therefore "archive" was getting difficult.
So it goes with old folks. At one point someone got her a "Doro Phone Easy", a retro flip phone with big buttons and simplified UI. She never took to that one, but I can see the point of it.
And why not just set up your elders with tech that they are familiar with? You can take an old landline phone - even a rotary dial one! - and plug it into a VOIP adapter and register that with, say, voip.ms, and provide the old familiar calling experience. Didn't work for my mom, because long before becoming uncomfortable with technology, she was already deaf enough to not be able to hold phone conversations - so email was crucial to her.
As for iphones and confusion. As they got more and more locked down, they didn't just get locked down against purse snatchers and such. I've seen several otherwise still fine iphones become ewaste because the giver couldn't figure out how to unlink them from "Find my phone" or activation lock or whatever it's called. These are people who can't fathom the difference between their Google account password and their Apple password. Not old people. Just people who can't give a crap about any of that, they just have a phone that someone helped them set up, and it works and that's that. That was one of Steve Jobs's talents - to see technology as a neurotypical non-geek sees it and make it work for them.