Older, bolder, with health and wellness needs, time and money…and he doesn’t want to use your app.
Silver Age • November 7, 2019
“It’s not you – it’s your UX.”
Snapshot: As our aging population expands with incremental health issues, access to services, support and therapies are shifting to digital environments. Enhancing these experiences for older communities is critical to not only supporting care, cost and outcomes, yet also to help aging adults maintain their independence and dignity.
recently discussed several challenges one of our Advisory Board members, a nurse who works with older adults, has in providing patients with access to support. A recurring theme revolves around patients connecting to resources, which in many cases, are only accessible online.
She frequently provides patients and caregivers with a list of links to advocacy groups and associations. Yet, time after time, it became apparent that her patients were not taking advantage of the available resources. The Silvers and their caregivers are hungry for trusted sources of information. They are connected. They try. The online experiences and information they seek have are not designed nor delivered in a way that allows them to engage with the content and community easily.
As the unsatisfactory experiences and frustrations mounted, some of her patients stopped turning online altogether for assistance, denying them access to resources that could make a difference in their lives. Fortunately for them, our Board member prints out the information and provides numbers for groups that offer phone support…not all patients are that lucky.
According to a recent Pew Research report, while Boomers trail Gen Xers and Millennials on many measures of technology usage, adoption rates are growing and the gaps are shrinking. For the first time, tablet usage rates and home broadband access are virtually identical between Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. As we move forward in a new era of digital health, designing to the needs and preferences of aging adults will be essential to optimize health and well-being.
The goal of UX design is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.
OXFORD JOURNAL
INTERACTING WITH COMPUTERS
Juniors vs. Silvers
Take a moment to think about what is available for children and their parents. The dizzying array of equipment, devices, toys, supplements, services, games and apps…all of the must-haves to keep them healthy, happy, and score that scholarship. The multitude of products and services that take their unique needs and abilities into consideration at all developmental stages. Then, think about how many life-enhancing products, services and experiences have been carefully designed to meet the specific needs and preferences for aging adults? That list shrinks.
It’s also staggering to witness how omnipresent technology and connectivity it is for today’s juniors. After-school at the junior high looks like the hotel lobby on break at a 3-day medical conference – everybody is on their phone. Yet, for older, non-tech native Silvers, it’s a different story. Values and perceptions of the role that technology plays in their lives are fundamentally different. As digital life has become a way of life for children, for better or worse, considerably less progress has been made in engineering usability for aging populations.
In 2017, Frontiers in Psychology published a report: Older Adults Perceptions of Technology and Barriers to Interacting with Tablet Computers. Findings suggest that most of our participants were eager to adopt new technology. However, themes emerged related to barriers including, lack of instructions and guidance, lack of knowledge and confidence, and health-related barriers. Disadvantages were reported regarding the complexity of technology and cost. Feelings of inadequacy were cited in comparison with younger generations. Yet despite all of the concerns, after brief exposure to tablets within moderated groups, participants emphasized the likelihood of using a tablet in the future.
Silver-centric UX
Designing experiences for Silvers requires an in-depth understanding of their holistic mental and physical well-being – which change with time. Collaborative user design and testing is critical to uncovering behaviors and preferences. We must empathize with their realities. As one Silver recently noted to me, “you really have no idea what it’s like getting old until you get old.” Factors to consider include:
Users – Is the content designed for aging adults, caregivers, professionals, all of the above? Users want personalized content that addresses their individual needs.
Motivation – Why are they there? What are the primary use cases? Design to match motivations and drive them to targeted content rather than serve up the buffet of all available information.
Emotional state – It’s not what you say, but how you say it. Searching for information when faced with a new diagnosis can be terrifying. Conversely, exploring paths to make personal lifestyle changes can be energizing. Connecting with the appropriate tone is essential. The visual and verbal appeal can be as impactful as the content.
Health state – Different conditions present different challenges. Infusing an understanding of the health state into the interaction can help to establish authority.
Cognitive state – Aging adults experience memory issues and process information differently. They also tend to have longer attention spans than younger audiences. Streamlined interfaces and guided interactivity can assist in navigating users to desired content and increase the completion of tasks to drive conversions.
Dexterity – The sense of touch and motor skills can erode with age and can present difficulties with touch screen interfaces. Menus, buttons and forms need to be positioned and sized to accommodate compromised abilities.
Vision – Visual impairments can significantly impact the ability to interact with media. To see how common conditions can compromise your vision, check out this simulator from Versant Health. Typography, colors and image usage must all be designed carefully to maximize engagement. For more on that topic, check out Designing For The Elderly by Ollie Campbell in Smashing Magazine.
Hearing – For those suffering from hearing loss, videos lose impact – consider adding captions to display words as textual equivalents and where appropriate, add speaker identification, sound effects and music description.
Devices – What devices will they use to interact? Many aging adults find phones to be too small to navigate and prefer tablets as they are considered more comfortable to read and less complicated.
Additional Best Practices
What else can be done? Lots. Explore creative ways to interact. Consider both in and out-of-the-application methodologies to increase interaction:
Training and Tutorials: Whether it is live training, video overviews, or tips and tutorials – real-time cues and guidance can significantly increase trial and adoption.
Off-line Assistance: Provide printed instructions and support made available via chat or phone. Ensure that individuals who interact with your consumers are adequately trained to communicate with Silvers. The Society of Certified Senior Advisors (SCSA) provides excellent resources and education.
Optimize the Device: Sometimes, the issues are not a result of what you’ve developed; it’s the device itself. There are many ways to make the devices work smarter for Silvers by using built-in zoom, type size, and safety and security features. Providing information like those contained in this article by Make Use Of can increase utilization.
Lastly, security – this is a major concern for seniors who are frequent targets for scammers. Any time you ask for information, they need to feel confident that you will protect their data and privacy. Be measured as over-emphasis can make them nervous and lead to opt-outs.
So who’s getting it right for Silvers?
While many experiences designed for Silvers leave a lot to be desired, many are getting it right. Below are 10 of our favorite sites and apps that have been thoughtfully engineered to provide Silvers with quality content and experiences:
Five sites:
1. Next Avenue – News, advice, information, conversations and stories curated for people over 50.
2. SeniorLiving.org – Expert advice on all things senior living – from senior housing and safety to money, health and care.
3. Alzheimers Association – Leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research.
4. Road Scholar – Not-for-profit leader in educational travel since 1975, offers 6500 educational tours in all 50 states and 150 countries.
5. Sixty + Me – An online women’s magazine about life after 60. Topics range from makeup for older women and senior dating to retirement advice and senior travel.
Five apps:
1. Elevate – Brain training with 35+ games that are designed to boost productivity, earning power and self-confidence in skills like math, reading, writing, speaking and listening.
2. Tapestry – Helping thousands of seniors get connected to their families online without needing to worry about technology, privacy, security, or how everything works.
3. Life360 – Brings your family closer with smart features designed to protect and connect the people who matter most.
4. MyTherapy – An advanced personal pill reminder and medication tracker app with a clean design and intuitive UX.
5. WebMD – The go-to medical resource has continually evolved their app to provide exceptional experiences for all users – especially Silvers.
What else is happening, and how will it impact Silvers?
While there are endless possibilities for enhancements in core digital platforms, there are massive movements in complementary categories that will change the way we connect to information, our environments, and each other.
The rise of voice-enabled assistants has just begun. Today we play music, turn off the lights and adjust the thermostat. In the not-too-distant future, they will be capable of controlling everything from our car to our coffee maker. The Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles has announced a new pilot program that will involve Aiva, an Alexa-powered platform, and Echo Dot devices installed inside of patient rooms. The system will enable patients to control entertainment and summon nurses using only their voice. This space is evolving fast, and assistants will soon be one of the most accessible technologies for aging adults.
Wearables are not new, yet they’re also evolving. Smartwatches provide continual connectivity and diagnostics, yet present inherent challenges for Silvers based on the size as revealed in this Washington Post article.
The machines are changing medicine. Massive amounts of data generated by our digital footprints + incredible computing power = amazing advancements in artificial intelligence. The prospects of personalized care, predictive models, clinical trial recruitment, and accelerated drug development and approval are but a few of the many revolutions that will be enabled by machine learning.
Digital therapeutics are also in their infancy. The device will shift from the tool we use to connect to a virtual provider of therapies used to prevent, detect and treat a variety of physical, mental and behavioral conditions.
Not to be overlooked are telehealth and social media, as many will continue to age-in-place at home. Connecting Silvers to providers and communities will be a major driver in their health and wellness. Many providers are investing in TeleHealth services to virtually monitor and manage health. While it is too early to assess outcomes at scale, multiple models are expanding accessibility and slashing costs. In the social space, Facebook is overwhelmingly the most popular social media site for non-millennials. Pew Research notes that 65% of those aged 50-64 and 41% of 65+ used the site.
Wrap Up
So as it turns out, he will use your app as long as you design it for him.
The considerations and investment required to design for aging adults effectively are significant. However, the returns are real – both to enhance health and improve the bottom line. Silvers by far control the majority of health and wellness spending in the U.S. Many will spend considerable amounts of time and resources on quality experiences. They are loyal, they tell their friends, and they can be a brand’s best advocate. Not investing the energy to connect with them may be missing the most substantial opportunity you never knew existed.
Silver Age is a marketing consultancy dedicated to enhancing the health and wellness of aging adults. We partner with organizations to create communications, programs and platforms to realize their health potential and market power.
To learn how we can help, email us at connect@silverageco.com
