Diversity is one of the things that make the web great, and every audience has its own needs and requirements. But what happens if that audience is comprised of a specific age group? Are you providing something fun and interactive for kids, or are you strictly an adult-only website? Age is an influential factor on the web in terms of not only psychology, but also accessibility, usability, and user interface design. Many other variables can affect your designs, but we will focus on the effects of the age factor for a website design.
The differences in how various ages use the web have never been starker than they are today. Because, the web has become so integral to many people's lives, different generation's users have developed different abilities on the web. While much of our work depends on generalizing about age groups our understanding is based largely on sensible, logical guesswork. So, firstly you take the time to know how your target age group is affected.
Why It Matters?
Designing for different age groups is important for two reasons. First, ignoring an entire user base such as the elderly alienates them from the experience. And let's face it: all of us will get old, and we wouldn't want to be treated like that. Secondly, younger users will be tomorrow's designers or tomorrow's customers. The best approach is to define your age bracket. This is identifying your target audience.
Designing For Youth
As children grow up, skills and comprehension become less of a limiting factor. Older children and teenagers often gain experience with computers through school homework and recreation. Technology is generally more prevalent with teenagers than with children; even very young children now have mobile phones and laptops. Research shows that young people are more socially oriented. Consider how these socially inclined users can contribute to your website.
Making a website teenager-friendly means:
- Keeping the UI clean (a factor common to all ages),
- Favoring graphical content to textual content (teens tend to read less online),
- Using animation and sound,
- Ensuring that the content is not so simplistic that it appears childish,
- That means use the more interesting content for marketing.
- These cuts wants quickly and effectively of get answers for customer satisfaction. To do this, you must set up a successful system.
Designing For Adults of All Ages
Of course, people who have been alive since the web first reached a critical mass comprise a large proportion of our user base today. Many designers look to them for usability testing and when assessing whether their work serves the audience's needs. As with younger and older users, most adults have at least moderate experience using computers.
- Designing a website to adults is generally straightforward. If, it is accessible and usable by modern standards, then it will likely be useful to them.
- Unlike younger users, adults are much less drawn to animation and sound
- Unlike younger users, they put less value on research and study and more on getting answers as quickly as possible. You can create a simple customer satisfaction.
- Making websites highly visible and highly memorable
- Website navigation should be straight for word
- Links should be easy to click