To get a more better understanding of the subject, I decided to read more about it. I decided to read an academic paper by Association for Computing Machinery, titled “User experience design for older adults: experience architecture and methodology for users aged 60+”, by Allegra W. Smith, Purdue University. It explained that it is important to understand the older adult’s needs prior to the design process. The understanding can better facilitate design conversations between the researchers and the older adults.
“Even in an age of user-centered design, some user communities and populations are still often perceived as technologically illiterate or deficient, due to prevailing misconceptions about their computer and internet use”, this statement reassured me about the fact that I was going in the right direction, as this was the assumption I had started this project with. “The goal of this work was to identify the digital tools that members of this community were adopting (or not) and why, what barriers interfered with their use of these tools, and how they articulated digital interfaces as contributing to (or hindering) their lives as individuals and community members from a variety of perspectives (personal, professional, civic, intellectual, cultural, etc)”.
Another academic article I looked at was, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Some Thoughts from the Generation Gap” by Timothy VanSlyke at the University of North Carolina. Digital Natives are today’s tech users, they are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multitask. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work.
In contrast, those not born in the digital world reveal their non-native status through a “digital immigrant accent” that manifests itself in a number of ways. The native/immigrant analogy can help us understand the differences between those who are comfortable with technology and those who are not.
References:
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants:
Some Thoughts from the Generation Gap by Timothy VanSlyke http://technologysource.org/article/digital_natives_digital_immigrants/
User experience design for older adults: experience architecture and methodology for users aged 60+ https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3328020.3353952?casa_token=couev-FG6UEAAAAA:O9mkFo9MNvotA0dWaSECPhLDUkkFYvFQDxzHUmrj2XilvKZT-wWVlgxygbMqLNs2qMTx96xDX0iu6AU