Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)
journals.sagepub.com
journals.sagepub.com
[0] This is the complaint I have with my wife's Honda Civic. If I want to do something as simple as turn on the fan but turn off the AC, it means navigating into a sub menu and correctly hitting one of several choices on a touch screen.
it's not like people can stop buying cars until the situation improves. joe q public can't be expected to start a grassroots movement and go lobby, he needs to get to work to feed his four kids, which means he's buying whichever car is available. it's also impossible to vote with your wallet when every [0] auto company places profit above safety/functionality.
[0] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article...
Unfortunately for us, government has largely failed in its official capacities and responsibilities, nearly all of them, and so things will continue breaking until loss of life and limb becomes common, where no one can sit on the sidelines any more if they want to survive.
This is what happens when corrupt people are allowed to warp existing systems for personal gain, and cannot be removed except in egregious violations of law.
When they first came out in cars, most people wanted one. Even I did. Then I got one and learned how terrible it is.
I had learned about the GM touch screen interface because I worked for Hughes at the time, and after GM's purchase of Hughes in 1985, they recruited a bunch of engineers from Hughes to automate and improve the vehicle designs and production lines. I had been offered a TDY position in Flint, MI, but who would want to leave Southern California for a job in that place? Just one of many offers that I never regretted turning down.
As someone who uses a lot of greasy sunscreen lotion during long sunny-day drives: no, they still aren't. I don't want to talk to my car in the first place, and it probably couldn't hear me anyway with the music loud and the windows down.
I don't love it, but I have to begrudgingly emit it works, and is safer to use. It works even with the top down on the freeway, and music is auto paused while it listens. I have it on a button so I have to press it first for it to listen, and basically only use it for selecting navigation destinations and music.
The climate controls cannot be controlled that way. Really annoying and dangerous to have to tap about on a touchscreen to just turn the fan up or down. Sometimes I'll try to use the voice thing but it rarely works even when I do guess a valid command phrase. At least if I have to drive about with a bug in the car, I should get use out of it!
Other than Tesla, which car manufacturer is stupid enough to put climate control behind a touchscreen?
Ford: https://youtube.com/shorts/Q512IeZ3DEA
VW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rALQoMiZhag
Volvo: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryIfmyiiETQ
BMW: https://youtube.com/watch?v=73zGfLmlx0I
Mercedes: https://youtube.com/shorts/PIO5n1b_Z0Y
In my city we've had three pedestrian fatalities in less than a year and all the drivers were aged 79 or older.
There are something like 30 million license holders. Retesting just half of them every 10 years (and rescinding the licences if the rest) would require about doubling the testing throughput. And it would be political suicide - the so-called War on Motorists is a powerful media weapon. It's an obvious idea that would be very helpful, but I can't see it happening. Unless it's an online test affair, which at least could educate on some of the rule changes. I have confidence they could handily bungle that implementation, however.
At the very least, however, I think they should run some anti-lane hogging adverts and enforce that law more, and also make it a duty of heavy vehicles to slow down slightly to permit overtakes, since that's probably cheaper than the billions and billions they're evidently willing to spend on adding hundreds of miles of extra lanes to deal with the lower capacity of roads caused by bad driving.
There is a reason they don’t work anymore, and that they get frequent doctor’s checkups.
If you think the population from age 25-55 deteriorates as quickly as the population over 70 I don’t know what to tell you.
Heck, I'm in reasonably good health, but if I get hit by a car crossing the road this evening, I could deteriorate quickly overnight due to injuries and be dead tomorrow. It's just less likely for me than it is for an elderly person that has poor vision and moves slowly while crossing the road as I am more likely to be able to spot a hazard and move out of the way.
A decent traumatic brain injury can happen at any time and most people never go to the doctor for those, too.
... and perform 3 controls-based actions (ex: climate adjustment, audio).
The testee commonly provides their own car for OTR tests. If they drive a model with physical controls, it could better for everyone.
But now, with Uber/Lyft/Waymo and all the other options, it seems much more reasonable to implement such a thing. Why do we have to wait for someone to cause an accident before we take their license?
You mean taxis?
In the city I grew up in taking a taxi was basically not an option. You can now typically get a ride from Uber or Lyft within 10 minutes.
In the city I moved to for college there were plenty of Taxis but could take 30+ minutes for one to show up, or maybe it would never show up and you’d have to call another company and hope they would eventually send someone to you.
These are anecdotes, but the massive increase in for-hire rides after these companies were introduced does show that they did improve the experience and made for-hire rides more accessible and appealing.
Most octagenarians cannot afford to use these on a daily basis.
Heck, most of the country cannot afford to use these on a daily basis.
And ... you won't?
I am in the middle of watching my own parents age, and it is eye opening. We have checks and balances in various systems exactly because there is a wide range of capabilities in the elderly. Where I live it is mandatory for drivers to be tested regularly once they hit 80, or at even earlier ages in the event of an accident or other precipitating event. This can include recommendation by doctors, social workers or even police. This works without needlessly discriminating against individuals.
But I agree that there should be a federally mandated set of commonly-used buttons while driving that have to be tactile - windows, HVAC, audio, etc.
Depends what you mean by managing audio - 90% of my audio interaction is adjusting volume and pressing the next/previous buttons. All easily done on my steering wheel buttons, though there are buttons near the radio to do the same thing (though they are capacitive buttons that are barely better than a touchscreen). I recently discovered that the "mute" button on the steering wheel is actually a "pause" button which is perfect since I rarely want to actually mute audio, but just pause it.
Android Auto was honestly a game changer. Good voice controls, minimum distractions, and if you do have to interact with it it's fairly minimal.
I've a habit of stopping every two hours on longer journeys for a rest so that's when I would organise content for the next leg of the trip.
Presently, that's what I exclusively listen to. I get in my car and the narration auto-starts where it left off. I occasionally adjust the physical volume knob. I tweak the library at home every couple of months.
I offer it depends on the stereo. My radio adjusts are rarely more than a single button push and/or a knob tweak. Eyes aren't required.
I don't see unattended self-driving becoming the norm during the next 20 years. I'm skeptical it'll happen in 50 years.
There are an uncountable number of non-foreseeable driving events and road conditions. I believe we'd have to rethink/redesign roads to adjust to limitations of FSD.
Past that: A top reason for late teens not driving now is parents can't afford car insurance rates that approach their housing costs.
"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program."
As a side note, the F-35 has a touchscreen interface that has been described as difficult to use when the jet is in motion.
What I found more surprising is that voice control isn't the solution, either. She is very reluctant to talk to Siri because it feels to her like there is an actual person there and she doesn't want to bother them. It would actually be better for her if you could choose a more robotic voice for Siri to make it seem more like a machine.
Not looking forward to getting older and having to interact with the brave new world that Big Tech will be bringing us. With some manufacturers you can't even drive a car without using a touchscreen -_-
Consensus was, it has to do with the moisture of the skin. Older people have drier skin, so worse touchscreen response.
I believe it to be a combination of dryer skin, poorer circulation, and calloused fingertips.
It’s incredibly frustrating. I didn’t really have a problem until this year.
That might be the reason for less moisture, but the physical reason for the sensor not registering would be rather a lack of moisture (so no current), I believe.
I think the touchscreen was the least of her problems. A virtual keyboard with bigger keys would be nice. Not sure if that's an option on Apple though.
I'm not convinced she'll have much luck with the iPad, so if anyone has suggestions for an elderly person to stay connected, let me know.
My father's ET makes me terrified of gradually losing my own ability to interact with any technology as I become his age and as interfaces "progress".
I am always surprised the extent to which "accessibility" does not include people with poor fine motor control.
They behave unreliability when I use the fingers on my left hand. I play guitar, so I assume that callouses are the issue. Older folks often have calloused finger tips; it's somewhat inevitable.
I often make or repair things, as well as work in my yard. At the very least, this often renders fingerprint recognition useless for days or sometimes weeks at a time. Sometimes my finger tips get scuffed enough that it affects touch screen use, too. I wear gloves when I can, but that is its own issue. "Screen friendly" work gloves don't stay that way for long, and aren't great anyway.
I also live in a northern area, so for about half the year humidity is very low. Even drinking plenty, and using moisturizer, my skin gets dry enough sometimes to make screens unresponsive.
Of course, we also get actual winter here. Even the best "screen friendly" gloves I've tried have been mid at best, just as with work gloves. Certainly not good enough to rely on.
A rather expensive workaround is an Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro but it's out of reach for most people.
Android and other random touchscreens seem fine, but my iPad can be a nightmare. I have to touch things multiple times for it to register. The fingerprint reader on there also hates me.
Older people can have trouble double clicking, it's even more difficult for them to "click 5 times rapidly", and to remember exactly where they are in a UI that has almost no outputs.
Hopefully as Gen-X ages, we'll see more thought put into this problem.
You are correct though, they're not the target market. I would like to see some of the more modern conveniences redesigned though. Perhaps I can win the lottery and start a business for that need. Kind of like the bras and shirts with magnetic clasps for people with limited mobility.
I've never vaped and I run into complex button schemes regularly.
In 1980, imagine a model that had inoperable controls until the engine warmed up. Owners would hammer their dealership until it was resolved.
My take is that buyers are more timid when confronted by excess tech - and less likely to hold carmakers/dealers accountable for a crap product. I think that would feel like meth to an CEO.
I don't blame the touch mechanism as much as I blame all the UX designers that adopted Material design schemas and their descendents. Bad layouts, unreadable fonts, horrible color schemes and literally NO contrast between type and background. It's apparent that none of this was tested on older users.
Apple is just as guilty of this. If you switch your iPhone into high contrast mode with thicker font weights it helps, but it wasn't necessary back in the early days of iOS.
Naturally all of that functionality was thrown out when the Gnome project did a total rewrite that was "going to make everything better" and "fix all of the problems" they ran into in the first version.
The touchscreen is useful for less common and more intricate tasks like GPS navigation.
(There are instances of aviation-certified touchscreens, see "Thales integrated touchscreen becomes the world's first product of its kind to gain EASA certification" <https://onboard.thalesgroup.com/thales-integrated-touchscree...> (2019), used in the Airbus A350, also "FAA Approves Commercial Touch Screen Display" <https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/faa-approves-comm...> (2015), for the Beechcraft King Air.)
One might think that auto manufacturers could learn from this.
And, mind, I'm of the opinion that if you have to type to control your automobile then someone designed that automobile incorrectly.
1. It takes a lot more training to learn to fly an aircraft, in part because the controls are so complex and specialized.
2. I'm not expecting to need to type while driving. But when my car is parked, there is no real downside to just letting me use an on-screen keyboard to punch in the address for my next destination. Anything other than a keyboard would frankly require too much re-learning, and I'm not convinced would actually be safer.
3. An airplane cockpit does not need to accommodate third party software, the controls are all designed with a specific intended purpose. Stuff like CarPlay and Android Auto need UX that can adapt to fit the needs of whatever software the user wants to run on them. A touchscreen accomplishes this quite elegantly.
I'm going to mention again the 1967 interview by Studs Terkel of Ralph Nader in which Nader details a prior round of reforms, largely involving safety, and the automobile industry:
<https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ralph-nader-discusses-...>
Direct audio <https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/11364.m...> (MP3)
As much advances as have been made, the dynamics which lead to Nader's initial campaign are still intrinsic to the capitalist-market model, and the behaviours are highly evident not only in the automobile industry but the high-tech world and much of the rest of industry as well.
(The Studs Terkel broadcast and archive at WFMT/Chicago are both absolute gems of the current Internet: <https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/>. This is a compilation of forty-five years worth of near-daily interviews with artists, activists, politicians, and most of all, ordinary people, Studs's true subject and audience.)
But even giving my phone the dumbest of instructions will result in an agonizing back and forth where it doesn't hear me quite right and constantly has to repeat back things.
Heaven forbid you ask the phone to do anything useful like change a setting or pull up directions for you. You will be unceremoniously dumped out of the conversation and into some sort of hellish afterthought experience.
Localization is not a solved problem.
I think that's why we
1) have questionable, federal mandates for automatic breaking and
2) have feds who can't seem to associate distracted driver incidents with in-dash screens.
The smart watches also struggle when used for measuring ECG or blood pressure.
That is just one aspect - older people are most hindered by the UI design in my opinion, the buttons below the fold and not obvious coz they are not visible and when they are filling some form, they just don't know what to do after filling couple of boxes.
That's just one example.
The recent development in vision LLMs show decent promise and I think we might have to augment touch with voice controls even for handled phones.
Old people won't know where the setting to turn off usb debugging is but a LLM knows and can also see things and understand, it should be able to help them.
I think that putting touch screens and foregoing physical feedback is the issue, and not old people.
Having said that, I believe it's been very well documented that touch screens in cars are less usable than the button equivalents, and likely affect driving safety. The only new thing in this study is that it's just worse for older people. (Not that younger people are not impacted).
A vaguely related story:
I had to get my fingerprints taken to volunteer at my kids school. They use a touchscreen device to take the fingerprints, and it kept failing. Mind you I was only about 44 at the time, so not exactly elderly.
The teenager working the counter says to me, "Oh yeah, that happens to old people a lot, you'll just have keep trying". The sting of calling me old was real.
She gave me some hand lotion and after about three more tries it finally read my prints.
Big government indeed.
Unsure of what happened with that initiative, but I hope it gets revived. Today there are many great options for efficiently analyzing video. Storage is also cheaper.
Side Note: Last night I was driving home behind a guy whose phone was mounted to his dashboard and was playing some video on YouTube. While maneuvering to pass by him, I could clearly see his eyes locked on the phone screen instead of the road. At least with Android, maybe Google could create a safety feature that prevents both Maps and YouTube from running simultaneously.