Had a talk with my grandma about her TV remote and it hit me different

Shes 78 and uses a Roku but the remote has like 20 buttons she never touches, she just wants volume and channel up. Why do we keep piling features into interfaces without asking real people what they actually use? Has anyone here had luck simplifying a UX for older users without breaking the whole thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathang676d agoMost Upvoted

Rowanp15 is right. Just get a big button universal remote. Fixes everything.

rowanp156d ago

hit me different" is the perfect way to put it. I wonder if part of the problem is that companies test these remotes with younger people who grew up with tech, so they think adding more buttons is normal. But the real missing piece here is that nobody ever asks older users what they actually DONT need. Like, what if you designed a remote that purposely had LESS stuff, maybe just a big up and down arrow and a mute button, and hid everything else in a menu they never have to open? That seems simpler than trying to teach someone to ignore 15 irrelevant buttons.