Trying to pay a bill. On the website ... it took 24 minutes to navigate to the right place. Then they needed 2FA, so they emailed it to her.

Now she's supposed to open her email while keeping the web page open. It took 5 minutes to do that, find the email, copy down the code, close the email ...

Web site has timed out.

Just one of many examples.

I completely agree. Same experience with my father. Sites impossible to navigate.

You’re on your laptop, now go to your phone, find your banking app, enter your PIN code (no not the same one as your ATM card), find the tiny grey scanner icon, scan the QR code on the screen of your laptop, press confirm. Now put down the phone and switch back to the laptop.

Fails 100% of the time.

The Netherlands has a centralized system for signing into all government related web sites. It’s especially egregious. You want to log in? Do NOT press the Login button, press the one saying “connection code”. For “first world” countries that should have no problem understanding the concept of an aging population it should be a criminal offense to roll out this kind of “solution”.

I can't get any devices to understand my mother. She speaks to SIRI or Google Nest, incredibly difficult or impossible. She has to either repeat herself a half dozen times in between asking Google Nest to stop. It is a shit show just having it play a radio station. Her fingers are so dry that she can't use a tablet. My mother inlaw has had huge success with META Glasses but unfortunately my mother won't wear them. Really hoping AI can fix things and provide older folks with a way to communicate easily.

Yup. Same here. Combo of car infotainment systems and smartphones are what did me in. Every bit of software made these days seems designed to produce maximum anxiety or friction to the elderly. It's one thing when you're developing it and it becomes second nature because you built the damn thing right? Walk away for 6 months, or a year, then come back. It's a fucking nightmare.

At this point, I truly fear that if we don't inject more humanity into the tech sector, ya know, kindness, empathy, appreciation for those in an increasingly degraded cognitive state; we're definitely building ourselves a hell we 100% deserve for the hubris on display.

This (elderly) is the ultimate UX test that most products and apps and websites fail miserably. Modern UX is a joke.

I wonder how we got so low from standing on the giants shoulders in the early days (I still miss my Sony Clie Palm OS organizer as being superior in its main goal organizing than any ios app I've tried after that).

Were we working for too long inside our comfy IT bubble echo chamber?

Or is it just a general quality problem and 2% law? With design just being more sensitive and more overlooked area (there is not much opportunities for innovation there to hype and inflate your CV with).