And Roxanne, at least somewhat old dogs can learn new tricks!

OK, so I will admit that I don’t like reading large amounts of text on-screen. (It’s also not as good for catching errors….)I also prefer to do my Web searching on a PC, not a cell phone. And I like to read actual printed books!! :-0

I found it a strange thing to worry over, and to me it was so intuitive when to single-click, when to double-click, that I had to stop and think out the principle behind it: basically that you should only ever have to double-click on something that’s selectable – i.e. where a single click selects it and a double click does something more active (like in Windows Explorer where you can single-click a file to select it or double-click it to open it).

It was a useful experience to realise that something to which I never gave a second thought – but just did automatically – might really trouble someone else and need explaining.

Perhaps being involved in the deep end of computers [programming, system integration, testing], we are used to working with applications and hardware so the basics of scrolling, double-clicking, or selecting, for example, in screen capturing software isn’t difficult for us. Most of us also spend our non-work hours with computers.

I will contend that there are many like my mother, who didn’t get involved with computers until 80 yrs, do run into some difficulties though double-clicking was no problem for my father-in-law in his 80′s as he had worked the Morse key as a ham radio operator for years. Through long-distance instruction, I’ve even had my mother making changes in her registry and changing out cards inside her computer.

Outside of a Mac in my late 30′s, I didn’t really become involved in computers and apps until my early 40′s but feel quite confident in all aspects of usage including Twitter and my Crackberry.

As far as apps not responding quick enough, I have some colleagues in their late 20′s, early 30′s who are more impatient than I and start clicking all over the screen or on a button, thinking the app isn’t responding. It’s all on what we are used to.

The curiosity will be how the 30-40 year old folks now will handle whatever new technology is rampant in their senior years.

One thing I’ve noticed that my parents have difficulty with — even after using their computer for some years — is when to single click and when to double click. And with double-clicking, how quickly you have to click — too quick and it doesn’t work; too slow and it doesn’t work either. My father, especially, continues to have difficulty with this. They fit your seniors demographic, being 78 and 79 this year.

My 85 year old uncle has difficulty with coordinating mouse, keyboard and what’s on the screen. He’s been using computers for years for email and genealogical research, but it’s quite frustrating watching him as his eyes and hands go from one to the other. Slightly impaired mobility is one thing — the other is the mental leaps between the various physical and on-screen objects that those of us familiar with software, hardware and the internet take for granted.

I’m sure my 20-something nieces and nephews equally find it incredibly painful to watch as I try to get my slow thumbs to create a text message! There are times when I’m sure they’ve just wanted to grab the phone and do it for me…

Thanks for the comment. I agree that access to users in their environments is tough. Actually, access to users period is often tough. But you can create your own ad hoc usability lab under the guise of training. If you do have a training component to your role, schedule an hour in a computer classroom for “training.” As you train users on how to do tasks, give them a few activities to do, and then circulate around the room, watching them try to do them. It always blows me away. Bring a QA engineer and interaction designer, if you can.

Re Jing, that’s interesting. I’ve introduced Jing to some of my IT colleagues and it has taken off here (at least for the QA people).

I see you have a new comment philosophy. That’s cool. I always enjoy comments. I’m a bit slow in my replies, though. Still working on that.

Those error messages had to come from somewhere, though; someone else must know about them, too. Try going back to your design docs, see if they deal with failure conditions, and work your way forward from there.

However, even watching people using *any* software is a great way of reminding yourself that things that seems obvious to you just aren’t obvious to others.

Yesterday I watched over his shoulder while one of the QA engineers at my work used Jing for the first time. I was astonished to see that he found it difficult to mark the area of the screen he wanted to capture. To me it was so simple: click where you want the top left corner to be and drag down diagonally to where you want the bottom right corner. If I’d been documenting Jing I might have assumed that it would be enough to say something like: “Click and drag with the mouse to draw a box on the screen. Your video will show everything that happens in this box.” But, for my colleague this wouldn’t have been enough.

It’s tough. You don’t want to treat your readers like idiots. But on the other hand you can’t make many assumptions about what they’ll know.