Warm Silver Generation: Research on Elderly-Oriented Products
UX Research | Accessibility | Design Principles
Role
UX Researcher (Design Principle Team)
Timeline
June — Oct. 2022
Team
8 UX Researchers
Methods
Desktop Research
Contextual Inquiry
Interview
Survey
Technology Acceptance Model
Card Sorting
Design Principles
Tools
Yuque
BoardMix
DingTalk
Overview
01
Research Goal
To bridge the digital divide for the "silver generation" and provide age-friendly design suggestions
Method Overview
Silver Generation: 76 older people in China that aged 50+ years old and use digital products
Desktop Research
Understanding environmental context (policy, society, economics, and technology)
Contextual Inquiry
Understand the behavior process and internal logic of the older people in real use scenarios
Interview
Explore the specific behavior status, ideas, and needs of the older people in using digital products
Survey
Collect data on the living conditions, digital product usage experience and needs of older people
Theoretical Model
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)
Investigating the design of elderly-oriented digital products is to fundamentally study which factors influence the elderly's decision to use digital technology. Therefore, we chose TAM as the theoretical basis, , as it offers a robust framework to systematically examine the key factors.
Research Framework
My Contribution
As a UX researcher in Design Principle Team, I iterated design guidelines from pains & needs and authored final report.
Impact
The final report, Warm Silver Generation: Bluebook on Research of Elderly-Oriented Digital Products, was jointly published on 2022 Alibaba U Design Week, receiving 5000+ online views and industry recognition.
Takeaways
02
01
User Experience has the power of bridging social impact and business value.
This experience marked the beginning of my UX journey. Before this, I was often frustrated by the near impossible combination of social benefit and business value: how would a company hire me for doing something great and important for the society but making no profit to the company?
I saw the possibility here--where a top company aimed to address the digital gap for older people, an especially tricky problem under pandemic. This deeply touched me, inspiring my career choice as a UX designer bringing changes to underrepresented groups and advocating for their needs.
02
Write design principles in a way that every audience can understand.
In the process, our mentor Yanyun Wang asked all of us a question: should design principles be general or specific? I intuitively opted for specific in the beginning, as we are often told to go deeper, including more details and more specific context.
However, she explained the answer should be general, as design principles should be applicable in multiple scenarios and for diverse audience. We should write them in a straightforward way that is clear to every one. For the broader sense of UX, it implied that for every task we should figure out the unique goal, and serve our deliverables for that goal.
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