Age-Inclusive UX Design: How Psychology Drives 75% Higher Conversions | The AgeTech Podcast S4E7

Keren Etkin: Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Age Tech Podcast. My guest today is Dr. Michal Halperin Zvi who is an expert on creating age inclusive digital interfaces. Michal, welcome to the show.

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Hi, Karen, and hi, everyone. Thank you for inviting me Keren.

I’m very happy to be here.

Keren Etkin: So tell us a little bit about what it is that you actually do on your day to

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: to day I’m working with either

B2C companies or B2B2C companies, And I help

them to increase the conversion

and the engagement of all the users. And I do it by working closely with the product team, either for research and validate the hypothesis that we have,

or for evaluating

their own platforms and suggesting ways for intervention. I came from psychology and I originally I have my PhD in psychology of aging

So using all the experience

that I have and to help them to achieve growth in this field.

Keren Etkin: work with startups to

basically increase

engagement

with their products. So at what stage of

product’s would

say that a startup needs to take into

consideration

creating their

user

in an age inclusive way?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: depends where we focus. If you have an aged tech product, if we’re aiming

only to focus on older adults,

or if we have an, a product that target younger segments, and in a certain point, we want to grow it by making it more age friendly or just to increase the market share by reaching also to all the users.

So it’s really dependent on the product and where founders choose

to focus

Keren Etkin: Okay, so let’s say that I have a product that is

the

general

public

and the product

already uses best

practices for accessibility.

Why do I need to go through the extra step of

making it inclusive?

inclusive?

Isn’t

an

accessible product

already

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Not at all. Accessibility is really one tiny portion of what it means to have an inclusive design, first, we need to take into account that Most of the older users will not use the accessibility plugin because they’re not defined themselves

as people with some kind

of disability. Since

getting old means that slowly, I start losing certain abilities that I have, whether it’s reading, writing. slow vision or whether it’s hearing loss or motor functions, the ability to regulate our hands and our fingers. So it’s really gradual changes. So they don’t define themselves as people with disabilities.

So it’s

not that in a certain age, okay, I turn into 17 now I suddenly realize that I need to change. My web definitions and so on. So it’s not something that happens in one day and they will not define themselves as people with disabilities. A lot of the things that already are in the field of accessibility would not necessarily will fit all the adults, but it’s not just the sensor changes that comes as we age. It’s not just the visual and the hearing loss.

There are other issues that comes as we age. For example, cognitive changes. that people tend to experience, like changes in selective attention, my ability to focus on one stimulation that interests me and ignore the rest, or our processing

time, think takes much longer we age, or emotional changes, what’s important to me all those things. interact with the way older adults interact with their product. And, accessibility

is

tiny things but when we look at a product and we want to make sure it’s inclusive, we should ask ourselves all sorts of questions which are not necessarily under the

umbrella of accessibility. We should ask ourselves whether older users think this product really answers

a problem that they have. Do they want to use it? Does it? really solve a problem that they have, they feel they need it

whether it’s enjoyable, are they proud

to

use it? Do they feel safe while using it? Do they trust the company?

company?

All those issues are other issues that are not necessarily in the field of accessibility. Actually, they are not.

So we’re looking at the area of usability, we are looking at the value the product has, but we’re also looking at levels of enjoyment and engagement with the product So it’s a whole

area that we need to take a look if we want to make sure that our product is inclusive

it

Keren Etkin: Well, it sounds like your background in psychology

is really

useful, Yeah.

considering these things

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah, thank

god I had. I spent a few years

studying about people, behavior, and motivation

Keren Etkin: Which are all

the things that you

need if you want to have users not just adopt your product but

be engaged with it on a basis

with it on a daily basis, hopefully. So can you give us some examples for

tech you’ve

worked with

in the

past that implemented best practices of

age-inclusive

and

an increase

in engagement metrics?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: My favorite example is a company called Simply. I’m sure some of you heard

of

the app called Simply Piano, which

be

called Joytune.Simply is a wonderful platform for people to learn new hobbies and more

things in teach lives

things in their daily life. So they teach people how to play the piano

daily lives

people how to play the guitar, sing and draw, and we started working together because they wanted to increase the

the

the usage of the 50 plus users who download the app and start playing the piano, which I don’t need to tell you how crucial and amazing thing is for all the users to start playing a new instrument And what we saw was as I mentioned before, when

start using a

start to, start using a new product, he asks himself whether I can use it. Does it really answer a problem that I have? What’s the value I’m going to get for it and how enjoyment it is. And slowly, step by step, we started doing intervention, whether it’s intervention in the field of usability, to making the navigation better, whether we introduced them with new things that they really, that were really important for them. And for example, playing with sheet notes, or just making it more fun and giving them the ability to practice more. And slowly, we saw an increase of 75 percent in the conversion rate. We saw an increase in 75 percent of people who actually subscribe for the app among the 50

plus

And I think it’s something amazing because so many companies don’t think to reach out and target this audience. And and it’s an amazing audience once they subscribe, you see the retention rate is much more higher than in younger segments

And I would say even something, stronger than this some of the successful tests that we did and the successful intervention that we did also work for younger segment as well. So we managed to implement it, to implement the conclusion that we had, to younger segment and it was also a big success.

Keren Etkin: a so 75 percent

in

in conversion from the free version

to

a paying

customer customer?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: So implementing age friendly user

experience

actually increased conversions by 75%, which has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line, and it also helped younger users. be more engaged with the app. That is

quite remarkable.

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah, I do have to say that, and we were quite lucky, because when the user downloaded the app, right at the beginning stage we asked him several questions. One of the questions was how old you are. so we were able to build a different journey map. And after he answered his age,

and

certain

question about his experience, they’re going to be 20 minutes while he’s playing five different notes until he reached the paywall. So it was quite a long

Process, quite a long time Wow.

Keren Etkin: you

us another example? For another

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: one company I’ve been working with called Medisafe Medisave has an app that

reminds people to take their meds on time And one of the features is called Medfriend.

A user can ask for one of his contacts, one of his relatives, to get notification every time he forgets to take his meds on time, so for example, I can define you, Karen, as my relative, and in case I forget to take my meds on time, you will get an alarm saying, Hey!

Michal forgot to take her meds, do you want to call her or

something?

Now this feature was

crucial when it’s come to retention or when it’s come to adherence of medical users who actually use this feature so high increase in the adherence we really wanted to increase the engagement in this feature.

What we did was first sending a message saying, Hey, did you know that 70 percent of the people forget to take their meds on time? And the reason why we did it was because all the adults, when they tend to forget to take their meds on time the first thing that comes into their head was,

Oh, no, I have cognitive decline and so on. So they start to blame themselves

while younger users say, I’m so busy, a upset mind, whatever,

so

so we wanted to normalize it. We

we

make our user to feel it’s okay to forget your

meds

of the people do it. So we start sending people, hey, did you know that 70 percent of the people forget to

their

your meds all the time?

We want to make sure that you.

you

forget you’re mad. Take a look at this feature and what we did was along this feature really divide the message to really short and precise ways to make them understand the

this

of this feature in really simple language, short sentences one message per screen really explain them shortly what it’s mean and, make them sure that they can They can regret any time they want. And we saw an

an enormous success

in the conversion rate of this feature by a 20% which was an enormous success. And when we applied it to younger users as well we also saw quite immense success so which was a really nice case study

Keren Etkin: Impressive! what types of

of

products have

to

be accessible

to people?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Which, aren’t? In the beginning, like maybe 20, 30 years you would say,all the users, they might need, I don’t know, health services to be more accessible and so on. Nowadays, almost every product should be, whether it’s a B2C companies,

we saw such a huge increase in so many different sectors and fields,

Whether it’s the working force, or whether it’s the consumer market, or whether it’s the banking online, whether it’s health, And I do all sorts of different sectors that we see an increase in the engagement and the usage of older adults. But I do want to say that we also start seeing companies who are B2B that actually start to understand that a lot of their workers are becoming older and they need to reconsider the way that digital platforms

are and the way they introduce with the new

features and so on So we start seeing a small

in

in the field B to B as well

Keren Etkin: Wow. So

even

B to B companies understand that their internal products or the products that they are designing for other companies

to

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: be age And yet I do want to say that there’s a lot of ageism in this field, in the tech industry in general.

In so many cases, the average age of the worker, I usually work with the product teams, usually they are between the age

of

to

40 max. There’s a lot of ageism in this field and

this

hard for a for a young designer to understand what it’s mean to be in all the users and why is it so hard for all the users to use the interface that he just designed, so we have a lot of work still ahead of

Keren Etkin: For sure.

So if there are any bootstrap startups watching us

and

they don’t

really

have the budget

even to

hire a full time

but they still to make

still want to make sure that the product is accessible out of

the

how can they apply

the

practices of age inclusive design on a budget?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Okay. So I think the first thing is to making sure that your product would be usable. And I think this is just really the basic things, Without asking further questions like the value of the product and how engaging it is, and so on. So just making a product that actually users

can use. when we talk about usabilities, uh, three core element when we talk about all the

UI

the one is the UI. The idea of, the colors that we use, the contrast and so on. And there are really

basic guidelines that we should keep, and they’re very they’re out there. There’s a lot of, guidebooks out there and a lot of text, And Karen is showing the guidebook that I wrote

on behalf

of

JDC, the Joint, and the national Digital Agency, and it’s free, it’s online, and we can provide them with a link so the first issue would be the UI,

and the second issue would be the UX, the navigation, and the architects of

so

So there are few tips that would be easier for us to make sure, like very simple, straightforward architects, not too many buttons on the

the making

it very

straightforward. Um. one task per page, like there’s certain things that could make it very easy and simple. And this is the second element and the third one would be microcopy.

And older adults tend to rely more on the words that they read, so adding labels to the buttons

not, to just, icons on the screen thinking it will be okay.

So adding labels and a lot of success messages like those really small things that we can do to make our product more usable. and it’s not that hard even in early

stage to make your product usable, I think that other questions like how you turn your product to be more engaging and fun and how you really answer the pain points and the needs those kind of questions sometimes a question that the product find himself asking in later stages

Keren Etkin: So can I start with best practices when I’m bootstrapped

then when

the

raises

funding, hire someone like you

to go through the

in depth process of making the engagement right for all

for older users?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Exactly, and We also need to understand and I’m talking, it’s not an early stage maybe it’s a bit when the product is a bit more mature, as I would not design a product for young children the way I design it maybe for older adults we change during our life course, some things that were very important for us in early stages are not that important we are more afraid and social, our social connection tend, tend to change, and it’s all interact with the way we behave with our digital platforms. So those kind of things are the things that we should consider later on.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And it’s I always talk about

the

fact

age is

age is

a

number but it’s really all about

the stage that

we’re on, the

that we have in that might be the fact

are at

we’re

decumulation phase

than

accumulation phase.

So there is

a lot

consider when you’re building a

for adults, and

are

a different set

considerations than you have if you’re just building a game for

game for

teenagers

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: is

there

anything that we didn’t talk about

that you’d like to

add?

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: I think first we should be humble and we should be very curiosity, and we should

you want to make a really good product that actually can answer their needs, we should be very precise in what we’re doing. ability to ask the right question at the right time with the right people. so in so many cases we find ourselves asking questions of, I don’t know, what is it’s usability when we want to understand the value of the product or the idea that we have. In so many cases we don’t really, listen to our users really need. in some cases where they would really want would be something totally different than what we had in mind. And we want to, we need to be more humble when we reach out this segment. It’s, I think we all tend to be a bit ageism and we seem to think that we know better than our users and we are not necessarily,

Keren Etkin: absolutely.

We are not our users. So you have to be in contact with your users early and often.

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah.

Keren Etkin: And listen to what they have to say and ask lots of open ended questions and try not to insert bias into the process. It’s hard, but it’s doable.

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Yeah. And I also, in many this is going back doing research, but it’s so many cases users won’t be able to tell us what they need.

or what they, what they want, but they would be able to, to share us the problem that they have. And I think it’s our aim to try to better understand the problems in order to find a solution. So I think this could be a good

Keren Etkin: an awesome tip. Michal, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

It was an absolute pleasure.

Michal Halperin Ben Zvi: Thank you, Karen.

Keren Etkin: If you want to dive deeper into creating awesome products for older adults, Michal and I will be teaching a masterclass in January. So Michal will be teaching you how to create engaging digital user interfaces for older adults.

And I will be sharing my own experience on how to do a preliminary user research and figure out what your users actually want you to build for them. We’ll have the link to sign up in the show notes and we’ll also have the link to this wonderful handbook and a bunch of other articles that we have things are worthwhile reading until next time.

Stay humble. Stay curious.