preface

China is a seriously aged country. At present, the degree of aging in China has reached 18.7%, the population over 60 years old is nearly 264 million, and the Internet users over 60 years old account for 10.3%, nearly 97 million, and the number is still increasing.

The rapid development of The Internet in China is obvious to all in the world. The rapid development of the Internet has brought great convenience to all aspects of our life, but the emerging products of science and technology are not friendly to the elderly. In just a few years, our way of payment has changed from cash to digital payment, from physical shopping to online shopping, and from offline consumption to online consumption, all thanks to the rapid development of the Internet. Internet products, basically all but we now want to put all the functions are all in a product, the omnipresent advertising popups and blessing of big data, the marketing the perfection, it also led to the APP package now is more and more big, the operation is becoming more and more complex, many young people want to fully familiar with the software is very demanding, not to mention the elderly. They are accustomed to the traditional lifestyle and do not have much contact with the Internet, so it is not easy for them to keep up with the pace of this era. Resistance to strange things, fear of online fraud, and difficult operation all slow down or even prevent the elderly from exploring the Internet.

Therefore, in 2020, Beijing Communications Administration bureau issued the “Internet Application for Aging and barrier-free Transformation special Action Plan”, the introduction of this policy made many old people who can not learn software rekindle the fire of hope. However, the reality is very cruel. Indeed, enterprises actively respond to the call of the government and start to design for aging, but the final effect can only be described as unsatisfactory. In order to be lazy, many companies only put the font of APP at the top of the scale, which does not play a complete role in aging.

In fact, the old man’s bad eyes is just the most basic, more is their thinking disorders, behavioral disorders, psychological disorders. Thinking disorders include memory loss with age and ingrained thinking about traditional industries; Behavioral disorders are the deterioration of their limbs with age, such as thumb joint flexibility, skin sensitivity due to aging, vision loss, hearing loss and so on. Psychological disorders include rejection of new things, anxiety that children cannot learn after repeated instruction, and boredom with software that is too complex to operate. These are the root of the pain points of the elderly, and these problems cannot be fundamentally solved if just enlarging the words of the APP.

Therefore, for the elderly, easy to understand, easy to recognize, easy to operate, these three aspects are what they need most.

To understand

As the name implies, it is easy to understand. With the growth of age, the thinking ability, learning ability and judgment ability of the elderly will decline, and the speed of the elderly to accept new things is not as fast as our young people. Therefore, we should always pay attention to this point when designing.

Copy is easy to understand:

The written word is our original recording tool.

Extensive and profound Chinese language, words are, in a lot of time, the use of a punctuation errors are likely to make the meaning of the sentence deviate, exiguous in the mobile terminal screen, long copywriter will not only affect beautiful, even lost their patience to read, also can let users as a result, a lot of products are selected using concise words as a copywriter, In the AntDesign specification produced by Ali, there is a description of copywriting specification: compact statement.

“The original reads: omit useless words and do not repeat facts known to the user;”

In most interaction scenarios, there is no need for an interface to describe all the details. That if an example is used to teenagers, I think no problem, because now most of the teenagers, middle-aged, are all more or less education, and so on the understanding also won’t appear too much of a problem, but need to know the elderly is no such thing, the old people’s cultural level relatively larger span, Words that are too concise can be difficult for them to understand. Often, plain and simple words are what they need most.

ICONS are easy to understand:

ICONS are simple illustrations, which can be used in APP products, on the one hand, improve the quick recognition of functions, and on the other hand, increase the texture of pages. However, for the elderly, they may not care about beauty and page texture, but they need more simple graphics and easy-to-understand graphics. Therefore, we should reduce the details of ICONS in the design, do not do too much decoration, and use the most basic graphics to combine into a set of ICONS.

Interactive easy to understand:

Interaction exists between the functional layer and the visual layer. When users use a product, they first see the vision, then discover the function, and then interact. Interaction is a bridge connecting vision and function, just like a matchmaker, who is responsible for matchmaking, and plays an important role in the final success.

Illustrated:

Relative to the boring text expression, reasonable use images can give a person shine at the moment of feeling, also can increase the understanding to the function, but each person in the eyes of the world is different, each eye center mark meaning may be different, we can’t make every user understand our design icon, therefore, we should use the way of combination of graphics and text, and Help users understand the functionality of the product.

Easy to identify:

The eyesight and hearing of the elderly will deteriorate with age. Mobile phones are multimedia products whose main function is to see and listen. So our age-friendly design is to make it easy for the elderly to see interface elements on a small screen.

Increase font and icon size: \

Font is the most important element in building an interface. The level of font recognition directly affects the efficiency of information acquisition. The simplest and most violent method is to increase the size and adjust the proportion of word spacing and line spacing accordingly. For example, wechat can adjust the font size by itself in the native system to simply increase the size. In the recently updated version, the “care mode” is launched, in which the font size will be enlarged according to the resolution of the phone screen in a certain proportion. And if you observe carefully, you will find that wechat brand green has also been deepened accordingly.

Reduce the density of page information:

Page is made up by various elements, fonts, ICONS, buttons, etc., within a screen, the more elements, the information by the human eye is, the more attention, the focus will be bad, for the old man, more focus on what they need is to get a kind of information, so we are in the process of design to reduce the number of page information density, Moreover, it is better not to have multiple types of information in one screen, distracting the user’s attention.

Increase page spacing:

Spacing is also white, element and element and the distance between, generally white, the greater the whole APP gives a person the feeling is more high-end, but when doing the optimal aging, our space is not in order to make the page look high, but to create a better reading environment, if the space is too small, element crowded, it is easy to cause the old man in reading time, serial, It is also easy to miss the point when clicking.

Use a high contrast color scheme:

Under normal circumstances, people’s visual sensitivity, light and shade sensitivity will increase with age, varying degrees of decline, so want to let the elderly see the page clearly, the overall color is very important.

The elderly prefer the color of high saturation and medium lightness, because the visual nerve degeneration of the elderly, the color sensitivity is reduced, so bright and dazzling color is conducive to the perception of the elderly. In addition, the elderly prefer warm colors and green, which represent warmth and vitality, and they want to be active rather than old.

Easy operation:

So once we’ve done easy to identify, easy to understand, let’s look at easy to use. After all, the purpose of letting the elderly see clearly and understand is to let them operate mobile phones by themselves. In our daily life, we can observe carefully that the elderly rarely hold the phone with one hand like the young. Most of them hold the phone with one hand and operate it with the other hand.

Increase click area:

We said the above when doing the optimal aging will need to click the element to be innovated, but be made explicit just let the old man can understand this is to be able to click on the button, we also need to click on the area to operate, the old man’s eyes is not good, flexible fingers as well as young people, we in the design should be click the hotspots of enlargement, At the very least, it should not be less than 48*48pt, and we should also be careful that the two elements that click next to each other should not be too close to each other to avoid wrong clicks.

Clear click events:

In the design of clickable elements, we should use the most common way of understanding and manipulating elements globally. For example, button style, clickable module style, clickable icon style and so on. If a blue button on one page can be clicked, and another page with the same blue button cannot be clicked, it will cause confusion to users.