9. Age does not matter

“Our users are young.”

“An elderly person is not going to be able to use our product.”

These expressions are mirages.

They do not help us understand who our users really are.

AGE DOES NOT MATTER.

Behavior, habits and knowledge about the product are the main factors to segment our users. These aspects are transversal. It is common to see usability tests where there are young users who have less skill in digital tools than older people.

You’re probably thinking: “What proportion of older users use digital tools better than their younger peers? Aren’t digital heavy-users more likely to be young?” But that is not the evaluation criterion.

The question is not appropriate.

That line of thinking is what tends to confuse us. Because if we consider that young people will be heavy-users and the elderly will have problems using our product:

• How do we approach young people who have problems using our product?
• How do we think about the features of our product so that seniors can get the most out of our solution?
• How do we facilitate the journey of our users when they have learned to use our tool?
• How do we apply accessibility techniques to reduce the impact of certain limitations?

Considering that reality presents us only with quadrants A and D, it implies oversimplifying the problem we seek to solve.

Another common oversimplification is to segment users by socioeconomic level:

“Our users are high-income.”

That they are “high income” can answer the question: Do they have purchasing power? Although you will never be able to answer the questions:

• Do they want to use our product?
• Do they understand what our product is for?
• Can they use our product?
• Do they get value from our product?

And some more.

The oversimplification of problems never leads us to their resolution, but rather to postpone them and hide the cost involved in solving them completely.