alt Hacker NewsOld 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.
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> 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.
> 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I think this is a bit outdated.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.
You are just describing a broken site?
I've seen static sites with these same problems, 404 was invented decades before React...
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...
This describes all non-technical users, not just "old people."
"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 :/ )
Giving up is a wise choice: there are so many other sites to interact with. On the other side they have only one refrigerator.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.