I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me (2019)

I help seniors online in my local community, and aspects of modern Apple design in IOS as well as in the app space (Banking apps) cause me to tear out my hair. They are just atrociously badly designed for elderly people.

The modern design aesthetic is fine, if you are comfortable that almost no consistent visual hint will exist to say if an active region in an app is a "button" as you and I would understand it. Sometimes they are underlined. Sometimes they have 3D look. Mostly, they are just regions you have to know a priori react.

Interface adaptability to landscape/upright orientation cause severe issues for people falling back on "the button is <there>" expectations.

Fundamentals like cut/paste/clipboard do not present consistently between first class (Apple authored) apps and second class (independent) apps like messenger and facebook.

The list only grows. Its a shit show, for people of partial ability, declining functions, loss of independence and agency only increases their vulnerability and whilst I like working with them, I am now exposed to far far more of their financials and private communications than I like, because the bloody software makes it so hard for them to use it, privately: They just don't "get it" a lot of the time.

I am not exactly young (62) but I've been soaked in the GUI since before it existed (online since '79) -These people are in the 70s and 80s, many of them only came into the modern era in their late stage, and are struggling.