If I told you that as people age their neuroplasticity declines—as they get older, they’re less able to learn new things, create new neuronal connections, and retrieve memories—you’d probably nod and say, yes, you’ve heard that’s true. It’s a piece of conventional wisdom that everyone…

Jim is 70 years old. He’s setting up an account to listen to music with an online music app. He’s on the security screen and the form asks him to pick security questions to set up an account and type in the answers. He has…

Unlike vision, motor skills don’t decline until the mid-60s. (One exception is if you have a disease that affects motor skills, such as Parkinson’s.) Priscila Caçola (2013) tested young, middle-aged, and older (over 65) people. She had them perform various fine motor movements, including finger…

A total of 365 million people globally have hearing problems, and one-quarter of those (90 million) are over age 65. If you’re designing a product that has an auditory component, be mindful that not everyone will be able to hear it. This is especially problematic…

Another type of vision issue that occurs when people get older is that their color vision declines. It becomes harder to distinguish colors that are similar and the color blue becomes faded. It’s not a good idea, therefore, to use the color blue as a…

Presbyopia is often called farsightedness. Starting at age 40, the eyes lose the ability to focus on objects that are nearby. This is because the lens of the eye starts to harden. Presbyopia starts sometime after 40 and gets worse until about age 65 when…

Let’s say you come over to visit at my house. It’s getting dark and I ask you to turn on a lamp that’s next to your chair. I phrase the request as, “Would you please turn on the electric lamp?” You might wonder why I…

Andrew Reed researched age differences in preference for the number of choices (2013). Across a variety of different types of decisions, older people preferred fewer choices compared to younger people. The age range was 18 to 90. The lessening in desire for choices was a…

Figure 83.1 shows Google and Figure 83.2 shows Naver. Which search engine visual design do you prefer? FIGURE 83.1 Google search engine home page. FIGURE 83.2 Naver search engine. Naver.com is the search engine for South Korea. Google is the search engine for lots of…