Video has become such an important medium online, yet video interface design is given surprisingly little attention. We have special devices and software for presenting text and images, but it seems we think of videos as being something we embed on a page, but can’t…

Let’s say you decide to let your 18-month-old daughter play some learning games on your tablet. You have a couple of apps you’ve downloaded and you’re trying to decide which one to give to her: The one that introduces number and letter concepts with music…

The Pew Research Center surveys parents in the US to get information on technology use for children ages 0 to 11. Here are some of the recent findings: Almost half of the children below the age of 2 regularly use a smartphone. The number is…

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…