[motoboi]

Old people. They exist.

Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works.

You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from there. Maybe you should have clicked something before? Maybe you should mark some form checkbox?

Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers.

What is on the screen is what they see. I clicked next and nothing happens. Well... the site is broken.

You known when you plug your refrigerator and nothing happens and instead of reflecting on the possible blown out resistor that you can bypass with a small wire you understand that your only relationship with the refrigerator is plug and unplug or call for help? That is an old person using your site. They won't fight against it. They'll give up immediately.

[StableAlkyne]

I would argue it's not even old people. Most people do not have any understanding of what's going on when you click a button. Website either acts as expected, or it doesn't "work"

If the button doesn't work, the average user is going to say "this most be broken" and then use a competitor (or contact your support). That's why it's really important to error-proof one's design (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke).

So instead of the button failing because you didn't check a box, pop up with a message telling them "Please click $box before continuing". Or if you want to be fancy, feed them whatever form you're giving them piecemeal, so that they can't continue until they finish this small part (e.g., have them input a name, then the next page only has a spot for an address, then the next page only has a spot for card information, then the next only has a spot to select shipping). Simple bite sized chunks anyone (well, anyone you would ethically want to sell to) can understand.

[black_puppydog]

Yep, I changed town a few years ago and my new social circles are mostly like that.

Either it works right away without any further questions, or they'll not do it.

Sadly, also if they can't do it on their phone, they will not do it. It's actually very hard to get people motivated to do anything that has to do with sitting down at an actual computer anymore. Which is a bit hard if you're in a very technical political advocacy group, kinda makes me the guy to do everything remotely complex... XD

[andrewflnr]

Yeah, it's really, really not an age issue. If there's an age distinction, it's the range of people who were brought up on computers before the UI was really polished, but even then it's not consistent, and they may not have deep understanding. Kids brought up on iPads, and who aren't forced to learn by their interests or educators, have no clue.

[breakwaterlabs]

> Old people don't have that because they

Aren't insane.

When did the industry put the onus on the user to understand how the computer works? What happened to the old days of Xerox PARC's HCI studies putting the user first? The computer is in service of the user, not the other way around!

If I need to build a mental turing machine to understand your application, it is a bad application. It is rather the engineer's job to build a mental model of the user and their needs, and if you can't do that you should not call yourself a software engineer.

[ryukoposting]

As a firmware engineer, my philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job properly, the user should never even know I exist.

Maybe this isn't applicable to all software devs. If you make web apps, users actually see your UI, they click an icon or type in a URL and hit enter with the intent of using the thing you made. With firmware, that's not how it works.

When you hit the "mute" button on your laptop keyboard, it should just do it. The audio should turn off and the little LED should light up. If that fails, even once, the mirage is broken. The user is forced to think about the fallibility of firmware, which is a word they might not even know, and still struggle to conceptualize if they do. I think it also has a lasting effect on the way someone thinks about the pruduct: Is this going to work today? Why did that happen? Was that a virus? So on.

OTA firmware updates have the same problem. Most users don't know what the hell firmware is. All they know is their computer is showing a loading screen they've never seen before. It's unfamiliar and weird.

Like I said, I don't know if this mindset translates perfectly to other fields, but the priorities that fall out of my philosophy certainly apply. Reliability over everything, and get it right the first time.

[ethanplant]

> my philosophy is this: if I'm doing my job properly, the user should never even know I exist.

This is my philosophy too working in infrastructure. It’s my job to care way too much so downstream users don’t have to.

[3eb7988a1663]

I have this quote from Wag the Dog burned into my brain.

  It's like being a plumber.
  Yeah, it's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you fuck it up, everything gets full of shit.

[SkeuomorphicBee]

> When did the industry put the onus on the user to understand how the computer works?

Just after the turn of the century, that was when there was a big shift in the industry to move all user interface design work to artists, and away from original user interface specialists. The whole profession of user interface designer (one who understood "form follows function") ceased to exist in the early 2000s, as all work was assigned to graphic designers (who only understand aesthetics).

This movement can be seen clearly in the evolution of widget toolkits for desktop applications, which peaked in usability in the late-90s/early-2000s, and have been losing usability while getting prettier with every iteration since.

[isityettime]

Automation generally goes along with a transition to more "self-service" approaches that require the user to model internal states and workflows of whatever they're dealing with.

This is even true for things as seemingly non-technological as getting to your flight once you arrive at the airport. People who are used to dealing with a service desk might just show up with their printed ticket without even having looked at it, take it to the counter, and expect instructions on what to do next without having read or considered all the fields present on the ticket.

It's not just about understanding the technology, but sometimes about understanding the business, policies, whatever. When a human agent or customer service worker is handling that stuff for you (typical in the pre-computer age), you barely have to think about that stuff and even if you're told, it can be "in one ear, out the other". Automation very often means pushing a requirement of more understanding onto customers/users.

[cosmic_cheese]

Usability was thrown to the wolves in favor of more readily available designers from non-UI backgrounds, brand identity (“UI as branding”), and pretty screenshots for slideshows and marketing.

The pendulum is overdue for swinging back the other way, but I don’t know who or what has both the capability and will to give it the push needed to send it on its way back.

[Hard_Space]

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works.

I think this is a bit outdated. I'll be 60 in a month, and have been practicing and writing about machine learning, for money, for a straight 10 years now; and I was a young man (and a full stack developer) during the digital revolution.

If anything, GenX had to work harder to get into these brittle emerging technologies and paradigms. There's no-one of my age group, at least that I know of, who is remotely as tech-illiterate as your comment depicts.

Truth is that it took so long for smartphones to dumb down everyone's tech acumen that those of my generation had already learned to do it the hard way.

[dijksterhuis]

> practicing and writing about machine learning ... full stack developer ... digital revolution.

my mum, a boomer now in her 70s, would have no bloody clue what you're talking about. she used to work helping out a guy who was doing punchcard programming back when she was young. she ain't dumb. if i broke it down into normal human english words, she'd probably get a sort of idea (or at least nod along to humour me).

i've lost count of the number of conversations i've had with my dad, late 70s boomer, where he complains that they've changed the UI. "It's all different and i don't understand, why did they have to change it? I don't know where anything is now." he's been moaning about things like this for over a decade now (so since his late 60s).

there are definitely technically not-very-literate 60 year olds and the general point about older folks, whether that's >60 or >70, is very real:

older people exist who don't have a clue about SPAs/PWAs, and chances are they're either asking their offspring for help (my mum does this), trying to phone someone instead (my mum does this) or just walking away from it (my mum does this).

[Maken]

To be fair, the UI randomly changing in every update is a pain point for people of any age.

[motoboi]

Some people know how to fix a fridge.

[rewgs]

GP clearly isn’t talking about 60 year olds who were full stack devs and get on Hacker News.

[tomgp]

60 year olds have been using computers most of their working life. Word processors and spreadsheets having been ubiquitous for office workers from at least the early 90s.

[lproven]

> 60 year olds have been using computers most of their working life.

Absolutely. I am in full-time work, and expect to be for another decade. I have worked my entire career in IT, doing tech support, training, systems design and implementation, tech journalism, and tech writing (i.e. documentation).

I will be 60 in less than 18 months.

> Word processors and spreadsheets having been ubiquitous for office workers from at least the early 90s.

You did say "at least", but still... longer than that.

I started work in 1988 and they were already ubiquitous in my world. Richer companies had the fairly newfangled IBM compatibles, which were still big and expensive. The cheap Amstrad PCs were just starting to appear.

Older hands had multiuser boxes with SCO Xenix or DR Concurrent CP/M or Concurrent DOS and a bunch of dumb terminals. My company had switched to these from Alpha Micro systems running AMOS -- and again, dumb terminals. One of my clients had a DEC PDP-11.

The real old hands had 8-bit kit: some CP/M, and a few BBC Micros.

The first big migrations I saw were from standalone (or multiuser) PCs to LANs, and from pre-PC systems to PCs and Macs.

[bsammon]

That would be "60 year olds who have been office workers most of their working life"

60-year-olds who worked blue-collar for a significant part of their life, this is not so obviously true for.

Also probably not true for 60-year-olds who worked in other non-office jobs, like acting or sports.

There have been a variety of well-paid jobs that didn't use computers that a 60-year-old might have done over their life, meaning that this can't even be broken up along class/income lines.

[wang_li]

I'm 55 and likely have been using computers longer than that poster has been alive. Regardless of the fact that I started young, by the time I was in college the PC revolution was in full swing and everyone had and worked with computers.

My mother, born in 1934, had no problem using computers. She didn't internalize how they work, but she learned the workflows she needed. How to launch applications and so on.

The situation described in that comment is just a broken app, it has nothing to do with the age or the understanding of the user.

[jimbokun]

Most people under 60 aren’t full stack devs either.

[Hard_Space]

Well, neither am I - I am talking about my own peer group, non-tech types just fine with computers.

[asdfasvea]

Dude, you know what he meant. Don't be the internet pedant. No need to be the protector of your class, especially one so inconsequential as "literal 60 year olds".

Instead of "old person" he put a number on it. (Cue the people who need to cut me down because I used a male pronoun for an unknown poster)

[xdennis]

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works.

Many developers are unaware how many people are not comfortable with computers.

Here's an example with my dad, 64. During Covid, he had to get his medicine by emailing his GP instead of going to him. He received the email address as a photograph of a piece of paper over WhatsApp. (Clearly the doctor wasn't comfortable with tech either.) The paper said:

    Send your medication request to:

        - [e-mail]

He tried a lot, but every time he received an email saying the address is invalid. After a lot of frustration he asked me for help (he's not the kind to ask for help).

He said "I tried everything: lowercase, uppercase, spaces between '.', no spaces, space between '-', no space... Nothing works!"

He thought "-" was part of the email address. To some people it might seem like he was being dumb, but he's never had to seriously use computers before. When he bought our first computer he was 38 and never used it. He got his own laptop at 46, and only used it for movies and Skype, before WhatsApp existed. It doesn't seem that odd to know how email addresses work. (He is a technical person, but not a computer person. For example, decades ago he etched a circuit to make an HBO decoder so we can watch HBO for free.)

[Telaneo]

Wait til he learns that email addresses can contain spaces and line breaks. They just have to be quoted.

"why

ohgodwhy"@example.com is a valid email address (although I suspect most providers will reject it).

Try having that make sense without all the prerequisite knowledge the average computer toucher has. "Well you see, [...]"

[initramfs]

There's a great book that explains how abstract computer systems have become from the machinery: https://dabacon.org/caelifera/2017/02/05/book-overcomplicate...

[bearjaws]

You are just describing a broken site?

I've seen static sites with these same problems, 404 was invented decades before React...

[motoboi]

Yeah. And reflect on the fact that you know that a 404 error is not a form error. Old people won't. Heck then won't understand that a chrome error page is not your site.

[foxglacier]

I think he means the submit button is disabled because some field failed validation. It might have turned red or have a message appeared next to it - and it might be scrolled off the screen so you have no idea. Or just the common "I have read and agree to ..." checkbox you didn't tick. Possibly because you didn't read the T&C or because it won't let you tick it until you click the link to the T&C. Nobody else read them either but they've learned through trial and error that when the checkbox doesn't work, you have to click the link to fool the computer into thinking you read it.

[frayed0654]

This describes all non-technical users, not just "old people."

[motoboi]

Yes, but even non-technical users have a different relationship that formed over the young (neural plasticity) days.

"I click the <next> button on this form, nothing happens. Given that I have an internalized notion of forms as a multistep flow, maybe it couldn't advance because something is missing on the current step? Maybe it will give me those messages below or above the form? Maybe some read message somewhere? I'll search for those and try again"

vs

"I click the <next> button on this form, nothing happens. Not sure what would happen next. Maybe the thing will tell me? I can't see no dialogs, no messages, no error screen. Nothing changed. Maybe if I press it again? Nothing? Hum, maybe is disconnected from the network? It's the wifi again? Maybe if I power cycle the wifi router it will reconnect? I click next again now I get a clear error message: no internet connection. I suppose my internet is broken again. Will call my tech-savvy friend."

[dotBen]

"Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers."

You know, it's time to stop this trope.

People who are 60 today were born in 1966, they probably entered the workforce in the mid 80's. They probably are not even retired yet. They know how to use computers, they own a smartphone (or if they don't, it's probably for economic reasons unrelated to their age).

As a founder and product manager, this kind of thinking is unhelpful as we design the future. In many ways it's actually ageist to imply that old people are unable to utilize everyday technology.

I was building public service websites (BBC News website) back in the early 2000's where accessibility was a real and important consideration. Technology progresses, and the bar for accessibility has moved up.

My father is about to turn 80 - he checks his heart with his Apple watch, video calls his grandson from his iPad, and asks ChatGPT questions from his iPhone and MacBook Pro. Maybe he's more unusual for 80yo's but it's time to stop this lazy trope that old people are technically illiterate.

(also, shit, I'm only 15 years away from being 60 myself :/ )

[antasvara]

I think the relationship people are seeing is "80 year old can't fill out my form, must be because they can't use a computer." But international surveys like PIAAC [0] indicate that adaptive problem solving is the real problem. 30 percent of adults are at or below Level 1; I've copied and pasted what that level represents below:

> Adults at this level are able to understand simple problems and develop and implement solutions to solve them. Problems contain a limited number of elements and little to no irrelevant information. Solutions at this level are simple and consist of a limited number of steps. Problems are embedded in a context that includes one or two sources of information and presents a single, explicitly defined goal.

This test is administered on a tablet, so I think scores can be interpreted as a sort of combo of computer use and problem solving.

A full 40% of adults from 55-64 are at that level or lower. Wikipedia thinks that a novel online form would be a Level 2 task, provided it involves navigating across more than 1 page. Based on that framework and assuming your dad can use the sort function in his email, he represents a top 20th percentile adult for the 55-64 age group. It's probably even higher considering his age as the trend is towards older groups having a rougher time with the survey.

I also think it's ageist to assume that older people can't use a computer. But assessments like this indicate that a full quarter of the US regardless of age would have trouble with some of the basic tasks we associate with computer use. So designers should consider their intended audience when deciding what's simple or not simple enough.

[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp

[Telaneo]

I'm curious how this lines up with US literacy rates. Is the group of people who can't navigate a two page online form the same as the one have reading comprehension skills on a 5th grade level or lower? Or do they at least largely overlap? In my experience they do, but it'd be nice to have confirmation.

I got taught in school to check whether or not the piece of paper we got with the test on it had something on both sides, so you didn't hand in a test that was only half done. I thought that went without saying back in the day, but given that filling out a two page form is a non-trivial task for what should be literate people, I guess it doesn't.

[antasvara]

Your intuition is largely correct. For any given level of adaptive problem solver, approximately 55% of those people share the same literacy level (i.e. a Level 1 adaptive problem solver is also a Level 1 for literacy around 55% of the time). 35% have a reading level that's 1 up from their problem solving ability, and around 10% have a literacy level 1 below their problem solving ability.

[celsoazevedo]

And now also a lot of young people. They grew up with iPhones and many think that "Wi-Fi" = "internet".

Keep it simple and light. HTML+CSS first, JS to expand functionality. Don't re-invent the wheel.

[pmontra]

Giving up is a wise choice: there are so many other sites to interact with. On the other side they have only one refrigerator.

[natbobc]

Is entirely context dependent. I can agree in some scenarios but when it’s a utility or gov site that I can’t really avoid it’s less straightforward.

[Telaneo]

I wish I could convince my grandmother of this.

"Why did the bank change the layout? I want the old one back!" - Don't like it? Change bank then. That's what I did.

I get that changing to another bank is a big unknown, but it's probably still worth it to show your displeasure. Plus her bank are morons when it comes to several other things.

[toast0]

The problem with changing banks to search for a ux you like is that it's not easy to see the ux before you've invested in signing up.

My main bank changed their UX not too long ago, and I liked the old one better, but the banks I've signed up for since are even worse. I signed up with them for other reasons though, so I put up with them because it's worth the pain. It does make my main bank look better though --- mobile style on desktop is annoying, but at least I can easily find everything I need... And it's not really their fault there are seven different options on the transfers page (including my favorite: same day transfer vs next day transfers... at one point same day transfers had a fee but they don't anymore so from a user perspective, it's the same thing but you can have it slower if you want...)

Also, signing up for a new bank these days is an exercise in KYC frustration. And then you can't actually transfer your money and use it, because banks responded to the dumbass check fraud that was being promoted on social media by limiting new accounts.

[Telaneo]

> The problem with changing banks to search for a ux you like is that it's not easy to see the ux before you've invested in signing up.

I agree. Better to deal with the devil you know rather than potentially one you don't.

Thankfully, I switched to a bank with a UI that was known good going by all the chatter I'd heard, but that's not really something you can guarantee to know. And even if you do know, if the rate is drastically worse at that bank than any of the others', then that's kind of moot.

[motoboi]

Yeah. We grown being trained to solve those small puzzles that are websites and apps, so we learned _how they are projected_, not how they work.

I mean, we learn that a enroll is normally a flow. Flows have steps. So if you came to the end of the flow and the finish button is gray, you think.

Hum… I'm used to flows. This is a multistep flow. Flows normally need me to fulfill some small checks and won't let me proceed between steps if something is missing. But some won't. Maybe this is one of those? Some flows have warnings in the end, some have next to the thing missing. I don't see any warn in the last screen, so I'll go back every step and check field by field for errors. That'll probably do.

This is the model you have in your mind, of how a website or an app works.

People that came to computers, apps and websites later in life didn't learned the puzzles.

[dghlsakjg]

Next time I have trouble checking in on an airline site I’ll remember that there are so many other sites to interact with that whatever I was trying to do probably doesn’t matter.

I wouldn’t sweat the broken fridge either though, there’s so many other electrical appliances in the house to use.

[reaperducer]

Old people. They exist.

It's not about age. It's about ability.

A lot of the people I build web pages for are poorly educated. The text we use for web is written for people with an eighth-grade education. Print material is fifth-grade.

People in the SV bubble can't imagine that there are tens of millions of people in America who cannot understand how an SPA works.

These people are invisible, even as they ladle out the food in the Google cafeteria, and polish the chrome in the Meta lobby.

[antasvara]

I'm going to link my favorite survey [0] to illustrate this point. Its called the PIAAC, and it's a internationally standardized assessment of adult skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving.

28% of the US is at Level 1 or below. That level roughly corresponds to reading a simple text and being able to answer a question about it that requires limited inference (i.e. if the question is "what color are pigs," the answer would be in the text as "pigs are pink in color.")

[0]: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp

[pugworthy]

> Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers.

You realize that someone who was 18 when the Mac was first released would be 60 now?