Reversed Multi-Layer Design as an Approach to Designing for Digital Seniors

Paper in proceeding, 2022

The personal computer (PC) has been around for more than 35 years by now. Today, we find early adopters of the PC who have been using computers at home for 25 or 30 years and are now themselves in their eighties or nineties. Despite this there is still a lot of research focusing on how to introduce and teach the use of information technology to older people. In this paper we argue that it is time for a shift to designing for digital seniors, i.e., older long-time computer users. Over time this will be the dominating user group and we need to design for continued use of IT rather than guiding older computer novices. The paper also presents the concept Gracefully adaptive user interfaces and provides a case study in the form of a prototype re-design of Facebook aimed at exploring and illustrating how designing for digital seniors can be approached.