Comment by brabel

Comment by brabel 21 hours ago

I think it's not that they lose their mental faculties... it's that they lived most of their lives in a world without computers (at least home computers - which only became a common occurrence in the 90's, when today's older people were already in their 50's. So they just never learned to use computers and smart phones and are completely unused to their modern UIs. Even I find it hard to use many apps on my phone! Like, how am I supposed to know that wiping carefully up and to the left is the only way to do something!!!??? So, older people may try a few things, and if it's too frustrating they just find something else to do and give up. At least that's my experience with my mom and auntie. Both of them managed only to learn how to open WhatsApp and call family, but it's always an agony when they accidentally touch something and the video disappears, or pauses, or flips so they can see only themselves or some other nonsense. And that's all they use their "smart" phones for! They just wanted an old fashion phone with a big dial buttons, plus a screen to see the person on the other side.

crooked-v 9 hours ago

On that note, compare early iOS and current iOS and the difference is night and day when it comes to even knowing what on the screen is actually a UI element. I'm pretty sure the only reason I even know how to operate my phone is that I've lived through the transitions that took away more and more and more of the actual visible UI from it.

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72deluxe 4 hours ago

Yes, modern UIs are baffling. You're meant to know that groping around the screen and swiping at things does magical things, or to swipe from the edges of things for other actions. Combined with the industry's perpetual desire to change what these gestures do every couple of years, along with the constantly changing UI elements (buttons don't look like buttons, then they do, then they look like links, then they look like buttons for a bit, repeat), it is little wonder how older people struggle with new devices and software releases.
Back with Windows 3.11, it came with a paper thick manual telling you how to use the OS. You could read it, and understand it, and you only had to learn how to use the mouse (the difference between right-click and left-click, and how to double-click fast enough), and also knew that scrollbars looked like scrollbars at all times, buttons behaved a certain way at all times, and UI elements were visible and behaved the same at all times.
I think we've lost that with modern UIs and it's a shame.

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