You know what they say: if your grandma can’t fig­ure out how to nav­i­gate through your design, it’s too com­pli­cated. Elderly peo­ple tend to have less patience, abil­ity, or desire to sift through tons of unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion. That makes them per­fect start­ing points for deter­min­ing exactly what’s needed for your design and what’s sim­ply tak­ing up space. Let’s say, for exam­ple, that you’re test­ing a design for an mp3 store. Is your objec­tive clear (instant down­load of mp3 files)? Will it be easy for your cus­tomers to find exactly what they’re look­ing for? Is the font size large enough for most peo­ple to read? Is there too much text? Too many ads? Is the shop­ping cart/payment method sim­ple to find and nav­i­gate through? Sim­ply put: is there any­thing stand­ing in the way of your user get­ting exactly what he or she wants? If so, grandma might just get up and head down to the record store. (Assum­ing there still is one in her neighborhood!)

Remem­ber to run your design past your grand­mother (or your uncle, your great aunt Matilda, or any­one who’s not so “tech savvy”) and see if she gets it. If so, per­haps she’ll bake you a nice apple pie!

As baby boomers head for retire­ment, pop­u­la­tion experts have warned Amer­i­cans to brace for what they call a “sil­ver tsunami.” But that tsunami could pose a spe­cial dan­ger to Florida — because of Alzheimer’s dis­ease.
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