"Designing for an Aging Population" with Author Jeff Johnson

Bay Area UXPA is pleased to announce Jeff Johnson, author of the book (co-authored with Kate Finn) Designing for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design will be our speaker this month.

If a website or app’s target audience includes older adults, certain aspects of its design become more important. Jeff's talk will describe age-related factors that affect the ability to use websites and apps, and will include design guidelines that reflect the capabilities, usage patterns, and preferences of older users. This presentation will feature:

• demographics of users of digital technology, by age

• age-related factors affecting ability to use computers and online services

• common design problems that decrease usability for older adults

• design guidelines that can help designers avoid these common pitfalls

Intended audience: Designers, user researchers, managers, developers of all levels, as well as Q/A engineers.

Speaker's Bio: Jeff Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. He is also a principal at Wiser Usability, a consultancy focused on elder usability. After earning B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities, Jeff worked as a UI designer, implementer, manager, usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun. He has taught at Stanford, Mills, and the University of Canterbury. Jeff is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy and a recipient of SIGCHI's Lifetime Achievement in Practice Award. He has authored articles on a variety of topics in HCI, as well as the books GUI Bloopers (1st and 2nd eds.), Web Bloopers, Designing with the Mind in Mind (1st and 2nd eds.), Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design (with Austin Henderson), and Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population (with Kate Finn).

Agenda:

6:00 – 6:45: Refreshments and networking

6:45 – 7:00: Chapter announcements

7:00 – 8:00ish: Presentation and discussion

After presentation until 9:00: More networking
Job seekers please note: IBM currently has several UX openings, and hiring managers will be attending this meeting!

Thank you to IBM and Eric Mahlstedt for hosting.