Over the last few months we have conducted several usability projects involving senior participants (people age 60 plus).  As the fastest growing demographic on the web, this group is likely to have greater involvement in usability testing in the future.  Below we have summarised some of the usability issues to consider if your website has any of these users. 

Older users are likely to spend more time than other users looking for information as they tend to read (almost) every word on a website.  Whilst this always aids task fulfilment, especially on content rich sites, older users spend more time trying to locate information.  For this reason, the usability principle of simplifying content is especially important to older users.  Simplifying content helps to reduce their frustration, avoid information overload and decrease the time they spend looking for information.

Navigation is notably improved on websites which incorporate clear signalling of the users’ current location or ones that use well designed breadcrumbs.  Because senior users have a greater propensity to forget how they navigated to a location the inclusion of these basic usability principles always helps.  Similarly, these users also find the change of colouring for clicked links extremely helpful in determining where they had already navigated.

‘I like knowing where I am and have been – the colour is really helpful to me.’

Some less experienced older users also overlook content located below the page fold.  Unfortunately there is no specific solution to this issue; however some things to consider include:

1. Content that visibly carries over the page fold (rather than a new paragraph below the page fold, for example) helps to signal that there is more information.  This is obviously dependant upon individual screen resolution.
2. Include ways to indicate to users that the page is not finished and requires scrolling.  Again care should be taken as the positioning of the link or button will vary dependent on screen resolution.

Further interesting reading on Usability for Senior Citizens can be found at Jacob Nielsen’s website.