MY AUDIENCE: baby boomer, business owner, parent
NY TIMES ARTICLES:
"living longer, in good health to the end"
"a new battle is beginning in branding for the web"
"microsoft faces a new foe in google"
"in texas school, teachers carry books and guns"
GENERAL:
born between 1946 and 1964
on the younger side, they're in the throes of kids, education costs, careers and commuting.
at the upper end, they're empty-nesting, grandparenting and reinventing retirement.
with life expectancy growing, boomers' focus is on health and hipness quotients to fight "old" aging and keep them in the game.
IDENTITY:
the baby boomers were the first group to be raised with televisions in the home, and television has been identified as "the institution that solidified the sense of generational identity more than any other." starting in the 1950s, people in diverse geographic locations could watch the same shows, listen to the same news, and laugh at the same jokes.
the boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll, was another expression of their generational identity.
in 1993, time magazine reported on the religious affiliations of baby boomers. articles stated that about 42% of baby boomers were dropouts from formal religion, a third had never strayed from church, and one-fourth of boomers were returning to religious practice. the boomers returning to religion were "usually less tied to tradition and less dependable as church members than the loyalists.
BABY BOOMERS & THE WEB
statistics are showing that "web performance declines with age"
two factors cause the 0.8% increase in task time. for each additional year of age, users:
• spend 0.5% more time on each page, and
• visit 0.3% more pages per task.
the biggest factor is that older users need more time to understand pages, scan the text, and extract the information. a smaller — but still substantial — problem is that people have more trouble navigating websites as they age.
there is also a covariant: the age at which people started using the web. because the web is relatively new, a 50-year-old might have started using it at age 40, whereas a 30-year-old might have started at age 20. this added experience might eventually allow older users to catch up and somewhat reduce the 0.8% gap.
BABY BOOMERS & VISUALS
as the largest population group in history moves into middle age, the incidence of vision impairment -- including those that make it difficult to read small print -- among middle-aged and older americans is rising. according to lighthouse international, the leading resource for people who are visually impaired, large type is best not only for people who are visually impaired, but also for all of us as we age.
when all of the nation's baby boomers are 45 or older, 20 million will report a visual impairment. that means by the year 2010, 20 million boomers will experience functional vision problems even when wearing glasses or contacts. this statistic bolsters the argument for promoting design of printed materials that are accessible to as wide a group of people as possible -- in large type, braille and raised letters.
lighthouse international is taking steps to increase public awareness of the growing need for broader application of universal graphic design standards, particularly among the professional design community.
as the baby boomers enter middle and later life, they represent a significant segment of society that will require new considerations when designing visual media. otherwise, there will likely be a major backlash against hard-to-read visuals as this powerful group exercises its influence and demands greater legibility.
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