“One of the greatest challenges or losses that we face as older adults, frankly, is not about our health, but it’s actually about our social network deteriorating on us, because our friends get sick, our spouse passes away, friends pass away, or we move,” - Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Josh is 65 year old former accountant, who recently moved into a nursing home with his wife. He was concerned about keeping in touch with his previous community and reminisces about his neighbors with whom he use to regularly chat with. He misses being in the immediate vicinity of his grandchildren and tending to his garden. He mostly uses his phone as means to communicate with grandchildren and friends, but occasionally gets emails that he checks and replies to on the public computer in the nursing home. He has a facebook account that his youngest gran daughter Sarah made him a while ago, but he barely uses it. His profile is mostly empty. He finds facebook difficult to use, but does check the "nursing home's society's Facebook page", that gets updates of various weekend events held by the society. On being told about social networks and how people (including his grandchildren) use them to stay connected, especially facebook, he spoke about how he always found the numerous options, and the changing layout very difficult to get used to.
Lessons Learned:
Mary is a widow who lives in the suburbs surrounding Boston. She lost her husband 3 years ago and misses the companionship of her deceased spouse. She has had a hard time dealing with the loss of her husband and misses their daily chats. Mary wishes she had someone to talk to about her loss and wants to find others who can relate. Trying to make new friends has been hard for Mary because she’s not sure where to go.
Lessons Learned:
Chengran was an eye doctor in Bellevue, WA. But due to age and deteriorating health, he retired two years ago. He and his wife moved to the suburbs because his wife likes gardening and wants to live somewhere quiet. Now that he doesn't go into town for work, he has a lot of extra time on hand. Chengran longs for a way to continue to help others. He misses the social connections afforded to him through his profession and misses interacting with patients. He struggles to redefine himself in this new retired state.
Lessons Learned:
General user class consists of seniors (65+), who are retired and desire to meaningfully connect with others and contribute to society. Some specific users include:
The researchers at Pew released a report on "Older Americans and the Internet" in 2004, which found that 22 percent of seniors go online while "most seniors live lives far removed from the Internet, know few people who use e-mail or surf the Web, and cannot imagine why they would spend money and time learning how to use a computer." Sometimes I think that they are the lucky ones. More recent data from May 2008 show that 35 percent of seniors now use the Internet. E-mail is the top motivation for getting up to speed. Health information, checking the retirement account, and genealogical research are next in line. Seniors, rather poignantly, look up more spiritual and religious information than the younger demographics.
"Among the obvious physical attributes often affected by the human aging process," he writes, "are eyesight, precision of movement, and memory." He recommends using larger font sizes and avoiding "hierarchically walking" menus (such as Slate's) that require dextrous mouse-work. So perhaps the Internet will become some Large Type, easily clickable, grown-up version of itself.