How to Make User Interfaces More Accessible and Easier to Use for People who Are Different from Us: Breaking the Spell of the Curse of Knowledge

Harold Thimbleby

2024

Abstract

When we are young most things are reasonably easy to use and we rarely think much about them — we just get on and do things. As we get older, though, what used to be simple things become harder and harder. Since people who are successful designers tend to be younger (and certainly not so old that things are getting difficult to use!), they may unintentionally make things harder for older people. They also unintentionally make things harder for busy people, such as nurses, firefighters and others with demanding jobs that leave less cognitive resources for dealing with poor design. This article gives some examples, and makes suggestions so we can recognize, avoid and fix or mitigate the problems. “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” Karl Popper

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Thimbleby H. (2024). How to Make User Interfaces More Accessible and Easier to Use for People who Are Different from Us: Breaking the Spell of the Curse of Knowledge. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE; ISBN 978-989-758-700-9, SciTePress, pages 7-20. DOI: 10.5220/0012744300003699

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ict4awe24,
author={Harold Thimbleby},
title={How to Make User Interfaces More Accessible and Easier to Use for People who Are Different from Us: Breaking the Spell of the Curse of Knowledge},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE},
year={2024},
pages={7-20},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012744300003699},
isbn={978-989-758-700-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and e-Health - Volume 1: ICT4AWE
TI - How to Make User Interfaces More Accessible and Easier to Use for People who Are Different from Us: Breaking the Spell of the Curse of Knowledge
SN - 978-989-758-700-9
AU - Thimbleby H.
PY - 2024
SP - 7
EP - 20
DO - 10.5220/0012744300003699
PB - SciTePress