By 2030, almost 20 percent of people in the United States will be over 65.  This is about the same number of people as who own an iPhone today – a very large and lucrative market.  But very few smartphone and tablet developers have experience designing apps for seniors.  It’s no secret that they spend much more time thinking about younger people. But for those of you who see this as an opportunity, here are 10 tips when designing apps for seniors.  These are taken from our full Best Practices Guidelines for making technology senior-friendly. Before getting into specifics it… Continue Reading Top 10 Technical Tips – Designing Apps for Seniors

Understanding minimum touch and pointer target sizes and how to implement them correctly is critical when designing apps for older people! Recommended shape sizes are a function of vision and movement control considerations.  For clickable or tapable shapes in a user interface, targeting precision is generally the controlling factor. It is particularly important when designing apps for older people who have vision or movement control impairments. Conflicting Guidelines Apple’s iPhone Human Interface Guidelines recommend a minimum target size of 44 pixels tall/wide. Google’s Android recommendation is 48 pixels tall/wide with a minimum separation of 32 pixels in all directions.  Microsoft’s… Continue Reading Understanding Recommended Target Sizes

Understanding minimum font sizes and how to implement them correctly is critical when designing apps for elderly people! Printed Font Size Designing apps for elderly people can be aided by understanding some old-school printing concepts.  Letter and number fonts have three size elements:  x-heights, ascenders and descenders. Specifying a font size includes all three of these. x-height x-height = height of the lowercase x character Ascenders = lines that extend above the x character Descenders = lines that extend below the x character Point Size = includes all three of these elements Minimum font sizes are almost always specified in… Continue Reading Understanding Recommended Font Sizes