Usability Begins at Home - 3 Challenges in Usability Testing with Older Users
Have you ever gone to a web site and had a hard time navigating around the site? Ever try to purchase something online only to find the steps so confusing and unintuitive you give up and buy somewhere else?
Web sites that suffer from poor usability almost invariably also suffer from poor readership and sales. That’s why a small, but growing number of companies are starting to put some time and money into usability testing. They are, quite shockingly, actually watching their users try to use their web site.
People age 60 and up are the fastest-growing user group on the web, and a large number of sites will want them as customers. In this post, I want to talk about a test I ran with an older user where the web site was actually not at fault – at least not primarily at fault – for a severe lack of usability. We will cover the three major challenges you need to address when doing usability testing with older adults.