Age diversity in design: lessons from Thor to Masako and beyond
There is a strong need to address age bias and advocates for age inclusive design across generations.
Even the immortal Thunder God, Thor, has to face mortality.
This was the situation actor Chris Hemsworth faced when he screened the Nat Geo documentary, Limitless. He eventually learned through a series of genetic tests that his DNA contains two copies of the gene APOE4, which is a strain that increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by eight to ten times.
Shortly after the discovery, Hemsworth declared that he would spend more time with his family. It has accelerated his thinking about life as he ages and the necessary steps needed to get ready.
Our Understanding of Age Diversity in Design
So often, we get caught up in the present without realising how age catches up to all of us. Thankfully, there are clues that show how we age. They range from the nostalgia of old photos to the gradual deterioration of our bodily functions.
Yet the problem isn’t so much about our self-awareness that we are ageing because we are reminded based on our birthdays and the people around us. Instead, it is our lack of understanding of the varying generations around us.
The term “Millennials” can be considered a fairly new concept since authors Neil Howe and William Strauss first coined it in 1991. The word is usually associated with people born between 1981 and 1996, where the oldest of the cohort would be graduating at the start of the millennium.
To date, there are 7 generations of cohorts.
1. The Greatest Generation (GI Generation): Born 1901–1927
2. The Silent Generation: Born 1928–1945
3. Baby Boom Generation: Born 1946–1964
4. Generation X: Born 1965–1980
5. Millennial Generation or Generation Y: Born 1981–1996
6. Generation Z or iGen: Born 1997–2010
7. Generation Alpha: Born Between 2010–2024
Thanks to modern science and technology, our life expectancy has increased, to the point where there is an increasing likelihood for the oldest generations to co-mingle with the youngest of the generations. This is a truly remarkable feat, given that such thoughts would have been ridiculous a century ago.
Challenges in Designing for Different Generations
However, what’s also interesting is how each generation will have different experiences, behaviours, perspectives, and characteristics from one another. There can be two ways to look at this.
- Put 7 people of different generations together in the same room at the same time period, and you will see different behaviours from the same experience.
- Generations of the same age will also behave differently. In other words, a 60-year-old baby boomer is likely to behave differently from a 60-year-old millennial, or a 60-year-old generation alpha.
We can attempt to do a thought experiment to teleport any future versions of us, at 60 years old, back to the present with a time machine. Surely, that will inform a clear distinction between our older selves and the current older adults.
How each generation views work and play, life and death, parenting, and singlehood will differ drastically because of their life experiences. To date, there have been 2 world wars, but not all generations have been through them. Some generations have also experienced recessions at different eras, thus having different behaviours.
Even the most mundane of things can lead to variations among different generations. The same applies for design and technology too.
The SimplyGo Debacle: Lessons Learned
Take, for example, commuting via public transportation. In the latest push towards digitalization, Singapore went through a multi-year effort to transfer from a legacy way of ticketing and storing value in a physical transportation card to account-linked payments via a mobile app known as SimplyGo. Despite various attempts to educate the population, it was only a firm decision from Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) to discontinue the legacy card system that led to a public outcry against this move.
What was the main issue? Although LTA indicated a two-thirds public adoption, netizens pointed out the difficulties faced by the older generations. The following are some extracts from the issues faced:
An online user wrote: “[This] means additional steps just to see the value, even though the current system works fine. The elderly and people who are not so tech-savvy may find it difficult to navigate a new app to find its value.”
“My grandparents do not have smartphones. They are barely literate. Many older people are. They used to be able to see the number or the flashing lights when the amount was lower. Now it’s next to impossible,” another said.
The verdict? A huge reversal in decisions made and a costly upkeep of 40 million SGD (29.8 million USD) to keep the two systems running at the same time. This excludes the service recovery to replace the cards of affected users, as well as the press releases and explanation given by LTA representatives, while working on a different solution to meet a fundamental problem in the user experience of different generations.
On face value, one might conclude this was a mistake from a government that missed out on the grandparents of the silent generation and the baby boomer generation. Case closed. But there’s more at a deeper level, which is surprisingly about the age of UX designers and a red queen.
Age Bias in UX Design: Bridging the Gap
Think about it. Our access to customers is largely based on target audiences and defined personas. We may overlook or underestimate minor details due to our biases, affecting the way we conduct our initial research or select users to speak to. This is widely possible for experiences that deal with wide population sets, such as public transportation and other government services.
So even if there was a UX team that went through the journey of a new digital experience, there was still a chance of missing out on the perspectives of people of different generations, largely due to the average age of the team.
In fact, the chances are even higher when the team is homogenously of the same younger generation. In a demographic study done by Google and AIGA on the design census in 2019, of the 9,429 people who did the survey, the average age of the participants was 35, with only 3% contributors being over the age of 60.
This also correlates to another survey done in Asia in 2023, where out of a smaller sample of 323 respondents, most participants were also under 35 years old, with 43% falling in the 25 to 30 age range.
So why are there more younger designers?
Part of the reason is due to technological advancement, which has led to a generational gap where fewer people are exposed to education or work opportunities.
However, equally crucial are the hiring considerations or diversity, inclusiveness, and equity (DEI) policies when it comes to employment or job rotations. The answer is obvious when your team lacks diversity. The danger is when too much unison in the same voice leads to narrow perspectives and blind spots.
The Red Queen Effect: Adapting or Extinction
Another misconception is that older adults cannot use technology. One can jump to such a conclusion by observing one generation, such as the grandparents of the silent generation. That may be true considering how they may never have seen a computer in their adolescent years. However, there have been incredible stories about elders going against the odds to prove humanity wrong about an elder’s inability to adapt.
Meet Masako Wakamiya, an IT evangelist and a digital creator. Unlike her younger peers, Masako created her first mobile native app game for seniors at 81 years old after learning how to code by herself. The game, known as Hinadan, originated from an idea to introduce the traditional Japanese culture of doll-making and blessings for daughters and granddaughters during the Hinamatsuri festival. The app game garnered a 4.9 rating and even caught the attention of Tim Cook. Below is the transcript of their conversation:
“I explained my app. ‘Since senior citizens are not good at swiping,’ I said, ‘I made it possible for them to play by tapping.’
“The CEO asked about the font size. I noted that ‘since the iPhone screen is small, the balance between the text and the pattern would be lost’ with larger characters. We also talked about adapting the app for the iPad and its different aspect ratio. It was as if we were chatting in a programming class.
“The CEO said he found me ‘inspiring,’ and as we parted, he surprised me with a hug.
“At the conference the next day, Cook introduced me as the world’s oldest programmer. Then a 10-year-old boy from Australia came onto the stage with me. They wanted to highlight the diversity of app developers, I suppose. There was diversity in race, gender, and so on, but I am sure that an old woman in her 80s was a big discovery.”
How was it possible for Masako to achieve what many others would have condemned her otherwise? Evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen coined the term Red Queen Effect, to explain this phenomenon.
In the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Red Queen of Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” told Alice to run as fast as they could. Even so, when Alice finally stopped to rest, she realised she was at the same place all this time. Surprised, Alice asked the Red Queen why they didn’t get somewhere else. Here was the Red Queen’s response:
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. `Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’
The Red Queen Effect is about the probability of extinction lying in the environment that caused a species to constantly adapt, evolve and proliferate, not the age of the species’s lifespan. (image source: Lewis Carroll)
In other words, what Van Valen tried to portray in this story was the probability of extinction: rather than the age of a species’s lifespan, it was the environment that caused a species to constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive.
Masako had immersed herself in another world, such that she grew fluent over time in creating a user experience that seniors would enjoy, yet using the skills of coding from a different generation.
The good news is that mainstream computing has now been with humanity for more than 40 years. We are now at the point where the Gen X population will soon be joining the older adult cohort. However, along with some younger baby boomers, these users are not like your silent generation’s users. Instead, they are likely to own a smartphone, have a digital bank account, and know how to trade stocks digitally. Despite requiring assistance due to ailing physical conditions, they don’t need to run twice as hard since they are familiar with technology. They are the pioneers of digital natives.
Strategies for Age Inclusive Design Across Generations
Our point of view, therefore, should not be to underestimate their potential to add value to our world of design and user experience. Rather, it is to accept our differences and learn from one another so that we can avoid catastrophic situations like LTA’s SimplyGo.
To mitigate pitfalls, the UX team can work out unique strategies to create a generational user experience — a method to be more inclusive across various generations.
Here are a few tactics:
1. Be the old
In the same manner that the old could adapt to the changing environment, could different generations also be like older adults?
That was what Chris Hemsworth did for himself in Limitless. In one experiment, he projected himself ageing by strapping devices that would represent his actual self when he was much older. He was not only bringing himself into another generational world but also generating a deeper awareness of how this world operates.
The University of Cambridge offers an inclusive design toolkit that consists of simulation glasses and gloves for a small fee. When made available and inducted as part of the design process, designers too can simulate whether their design fits the hands of their older selves.
2. With the old
We can reframe hiring not by age alone but by experience. As organisations modernise to become more inclusive, it is equally important to have older adults be part of the team.
A famous Silicon Valley example is 90+-year-old IDEO designer Barbara Beskind. Working on various projects, from delivery services to eyewear, Barbara is a testament that proves age has no limits, especially when she garners the respect of fellow colleagues and the community around her.
Elders, including Masako, have lots to offer, and we should neither exclude their perspectives on our work across generations nor refuse to hire them.
3. About the old: inclusive-first approach with interviewing
If diversity, equity, and inclusivity are strategic priorities for your products and services, then consider conducting continuous research with your customers.
Teresa Torres developed the process known as continuous discovery, which consists of conducting small research activities through weekly touchpoints with customers by the team that’s building the product. In other words, it’s a mindset of developing a habit of having conversations with your customers and getting regular feedback from them.
In this case, scheduling conversations with a diverse pool of users of different generations only helps remove the confirmation bias of our products. It also further solidifies your understanding of how people perceive your products.
4. For the old and every generation
Rather than flagging out specific solutions catered to older adults (i.e., agetech), inclusive design considers user-friendly solutions that stretch across generations.
This is because most people, regardless of age, still cherish autonomy and independence. Hence, catering to an intuitive and self-serving solution with readily available support would be a core design principle for designers.
Besides SimplyGo, Singapore actually has a plenitude of digital solutions that benefit the entire community, such as medical appointments (health hub), healthy living (healthy 365), digital identity (Singpass), community vouchers (CDC vouchers), and many more.
Coupled with the service design of public infrastructure and buildings, Singapore is poised to become a multi-generational inclusive nation in the coming years and can be an example for many other communities, including designers, to follow.
Time waits for no one. As age catches up on all of us, we need to be mindful that our design will vary with the changing time periods. Given the rise of AI, we can expect to see the technological and cultural landscape change rapidly again. For some, our designer’s blind spots and biases may lead to the undesirable consequences of adverse reactions. Yet, heroes like Masako and Barbara have crossed generational barriers and inspired superheroes like Chris Hemsworth to be like them.
We, too, can learn a few things from our elders. And by doing so, we can design amazing products for everyone.
References
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