Fashion, Function & Fun: Product Design Demands of Older Baby Boomer Consumers
Too many designers, marketers and concerned observers have declared universal design to be the universal answer to meet the new needs of the growing numbers of older baby boomer consumers. While not altogether incorrect, they are woefully incomplete in their hopes and claims. Universal design and ease of use is not the secret sauce for business to deliver value in an aging marketplace. Even if an older consumer can easily use a technology, they must value its functionality before investing the money, time to learn, let alone adopt a new way to do tasks that they may already achieve with 'tried and true' methods.
Novelty in Youth, Functional Fun in Older Age
Product developers and designers have often neglected how product value changes with age. Novelty alone often makes a compelling case for younger users to adopt a new device. Younger buyers are likely to purchase a product because it is a ‘must have’ fashion statement and adoption of a new product is sometimes more important for what it ‘says about me’ than ‘what it does for me’.
Novelty in Youth, Functional Fun in Older Age
Product developers and designers have often neglected how product value changes with age. Novelty alone often makes a compelling case for younger users to adopt a new device. Younger buyers are likely to purchase a product because it is a ‘must have’ fashion statement and adoption of a new product is sometimes more important for what it ‘says about me’ than ‘what it does for me’.
It would be a mistake to suggest that people lose their desire to be fashionable with each birthday. A quick look at the growing sales of beauty products and boutique clothing stores catering to older baby boomer consumers shows that older age does not mean 'old'. Older consumers want fashion as much as their younger friends – they just want that and more.
Research suggests that older users critically assess whether a new technology clearly provides greater value than the existing means they use to satisfy a given need before spending money or time. If the value is not appreciably greater than the existing means, then the likelihood of spending the time to learn how to use, let alone adopt, the technology is very low.
Consider the personal digital assistant or PDA. In addition to their inherent usability issues, PDA adoption has had its greatest competition from a time tested favorite technology -- the moleskin notebook. An older adult who manages only 100 or so contacts and enjoys the other ‘scribbles’ they put in their 'paper-based handheld' is not likely to invest time or money in a PDA.
Likewise, travelers that frequent local and familiar roads – roads that they may have traveled for decades – are not candidates for in-vehicle navigation systems. Often, the reason older consumers do not adopt these technologies is not due to "techno-phobia" nor usability. Instead, the technologies have failed to provide compelling value to a more discriminating consumer.
Consider the personal digital assistant or PDA. In addition to their inherent usability issues, PDA adoption has had its greatest competition from a time tested favorite technology -- the moleskin notebook. An older adult who manages only 100 or so contacts and enjoys the other ‘scribbles’ they put in their 'paper-based handheld' is not likely to invest time or money in a PDA. Likewise, travelers that frequent local and familiar roads – roads that they may have traveled for decades – are not candidates for in-vehicle navigation systems. Often, the reason older consumers do not adopt these technologies is not due to "techno-phobia" nor usability. Instead, the technologies have failed to provide compelling value to a more discriminating consumer.