Download Strategic Usability Research

Web Usability and Age
Thomas S. Tullis ([email protected])
Ann Chadwick-Dias ([email protected])
Human Interface Design Department, Fidelity Investments
Materials for AARP Panel: Tyranny of the Tiny Type
March 4, 2003
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Research on Web Usability & Age
 Our overall goal is to improve the usability of
Fidelity’s web sites for users of all ages.
 Some specific questions we have been studying
over the past year:
 Does age affect how users interact with web
sites?
 Is this independent of web experience?
 Does age affect users’ subjective reactions to
web sites, such as their level of trust in
financial web sites?
 What design factors improve usability and
subjective reactions for different age groups?
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Why Are We Studying This?
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Increasing number of older adults in the US, as
shown by the 2000 census.
According to the Administration on Aging (2001),
there are an estimated 4.2 million Internet users
over the age of 65 in the United States.
As older users are increasingly exposed to
technology, understanding their unique
requirements will become paramount in the
design of human interfaces.
In short, older adults are a very important group
for our company, and we want to provide them
with the best possible service.
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Overview of Our Studies
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Study 1:
 Learn whether there are differences in how users
of various ages interact with a web site, and
whether text size has an effect on usability.
Study 2:
 Redesigned the prototype to address specific
usability problems encountered by older users in
Study 1.
Study 3 (still underway):
 Confirm some of the earlier findings with a wide
variety of live financial services sites.
 Investigate subjective factors, such as trust.
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Common Approaches– All Studies
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Used external participants of varying ages:
 Not Fidelity employees or current customers.
Tried to control for web/PC experience across ages.
All studies were conducted in our Usability Labs in
Boston.
All studies involved asking the participants to
perform representative tasks.
Displayed sites in 800x600 resolution on a 17-inch
monitor using Microsoft® Internet Explorer® version
6.0.
Data collected: Subjective ratings, task duration,
task success, click data, and extensive observations.
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Studies 1 & 2: Overall Conclusions
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Even when level of PC/Web experience is
controlled, older adults experience more usability
issues on the web than younger adults.
When specific design modifications were made to
accommodate the unique needs of older adults,
the modifications improved usability for all users,
with equal effect.
But we still did not “close the usability gap”
between younger and older users.
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Lesson 1: Reading
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Older adults tend to read most of the text on a
page.
Design Implications:
 Reduce the amount of text on each page while
conveying the required information and not
compromising the effectiveness of instructional
text.
 Be as concise as possible when providing
instructions.
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Lesson 2: “Cautious Clicking”
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Older users tend to be more cautious in
everything they do on the web, including clicking
on links.
Design Implications:
 Use action-word links– links that clearly
explain what will happen when the user clicks
the link.
 The more clear the resulting action for the link,
the more likely older users will click it (and the
faster they will click it).
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Lesson 3: Larger Text
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Even though it may not significantly improve
overall performance, older users prefer larger
text.
Design implications:
 Use a “medium-sized” default font.
 Provide an obvious way for older users to
increase text size, like a visible button.
 Use “scalable fonts” or fonts that will allow the
user to increase and decrease text size using
the browser functions (View > Text Size >
Larger).
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Lesson 4: Links
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Older users are more likely to click objects that
look “clickable”, including bullets, headings, etc.
Older adults have difficulty clicking small text links.
Design Implications:
 Use an obvious and consistent method of
displaying text links, like blue underlining with
red on mouseover.
 Use image-based links that provide a larger
target area for the user to click.
 Increase redundancy in links (making text AND
bullets links) to increase the chances that older
users will successfully reach their target.
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Lesson 5: Confidence & Anxiety
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Numerous experiential differences contribute to
older users’ overall level of confidence and
anxiety in using the web.
The more success older users experience with a
particular site, the higher their confidence level
will become, and the lower their overall anxiety.
Design Implications:
 Keep your design simple and stable. Too many
changes in the design over a short period of
time will force the older users to re-learn how
to work with the site.
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Lesson 6: Terminology
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Older users often do not understand terms that
younger users consider common knowledge.
Some of these terms include Back (or go Back),
link (click the link), URL, menu bar, toolbar, IM,
minimize, Login, and home.
Design Implications:
 Do not use web or other technology-related
terms without defining them.
 Keep terminology as simple as possible
throughout your site.
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Lesson 7: Consider Disabilities
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As people age, they have an increased likelihood
of disabilities, including visual (myopia, cataracts,
etc.), fine motor (tremors in hands),
muscular/skeletal (bone disease like arthritis),
and cognitive (short-term memory decreases).
Design Implications:
 Review the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines. This provides recommendations for
supporting assistive technologies and
designing for users with disabilities.
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Lesson 8: Too Much Detail
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Older users have difficulty working with pages
that are dense or have too much detail.
Design Implications:
 Keep pages as simple as possible so that older
users do not encounter “information overload.”
 Provide concise instructional text and break
information up into separate pages if
necessary, so that no one page presents too
much information or requires users to
remember too much.
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Conclusions: Studies 1 and 2
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Older adults probably experience lower usability
because of a myriad of contributing factors,
including site design factors, as well as social,
cultural, cognitive, psychological, and physical
factors, and overall differences in life experience.
Site design modifications that help older users
will often help younger users too.
Additional research needs to be conducted to
learn more about how to design interfaces to
better meet the needs of older users.
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What’s Next?
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Finish this third study!
Determine which specific site design features
impact subjective reactions such as trust and
whether this differs by age.
Consider multiple “life-stage-based” designs for
web sites (based on what we learn in the current
study).
Test different age groups on different prototypes.
Ultimately learn how to design web sites to
optimize the experience for users of all
ages.
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