Interactive design and the people who use it.

Why is that demographics play such a huge role in today’s interactive products? For example, trying to get my parents (age 57-58) to hook up a simple web cam, or navigate a new email system. It is extremely difficult to help them due to the fact it seems that there is an understand barrier or system map deficiency. When you ask a 8-10 year old child to navigate and complete these tasks it is very simple and they need no help. I’m sure most of us have encountered this issue at some juncture in life.

A little history which we all might understand is that elders haven’t grown up with these new technologies and the older we get the less responsive we are to new things and new processes. Also children these days now have interactive products at a very early age, in fact today’s adolescent market is saturated with interactive products from music learning to emulating a PC. One thing I have also noticed is that older demographics need to understand why processes are formulated the way they are, rather than just accepting them like the younger demographics do.

Ok… so to get to my point. How does one design an interface that spans usage for all demographics? I like to think of this challenge like a system map. This map must compose of a 4 simple criteria.

-First- simple clean interface (no clutter and limiting operations per page).

-Second- semiotic similarities between congruent operations.

-Third- hierarchy of operations (direction dependent).

-Forth- comparative awareness to similar Interfaces.

In conclusion, designing an interface for “everyone” is a complicated task but not impossible. Building a solid structure and easy behavior leanings will improve user experience and empower users to use more and branch out to other similar interactions.

>JA