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cognitive design usability

7 tips for designing for older users

Although the article from webcredible is titled “7 tips for designing for older users“, the strategies are great for plain old usability and accessibility. Here is a summary with some comments.

  1. Make obvious what’s clickable and what’s not. (Please don’t mess with the underlines!)
  2. Use radio buttons rather than dropdown menus. (Unless you have over, say, 8 options.)
  3. Stay in one window.
  4. Implement the shallowest possible information hierarchy. (And forget 3 or 4-level cascading menus; they are also difficult to navigation with our without a mouse.)
  5. Include a site map and link to it from every page. (Also good for SEO.)
  6. Keep your language simple.
  7. Appear trustworthy.

3 replies on “7 tips for designing for older users”

Also, it’s important to make the font large enough and dark enough for older users to read. Or, at least give an option for the reader to change the font to a larger size. For the body copy, black text on a white background is easiest (for anyone) to read.

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