Today I was at the London Bridge station and spotted this St Thomas street with a preconceived "share" meaning icon in front of it; wondering.. since when we're embedded the correlation meaning from this symbol to the abstract concept, such as "share,”?
Remember when I was teaching my 72-year-old dad using Gmail on his phone. He was trying to learn how to forward an email to a client. For me, everything was so straightforward: a left-pointing arrow meant to reply, and a right-pointing arrow meant forward. I couldn’t remember when this incident occurred, yet back then, there was no existing text following the icons. We were talking over the phone, and after a few presses, he got lost and then confused by the Android system navigation from the app - it was a mess.
There’s another memory of me teaching a 76-year-old well-educated Hong Kong lady to transfer money with her mobile banking. She has multiple bank services, and some of the banks select the receiver before the sender, and some do it the other way around, where she’s always confused.
I’m not writing to judge a UI design or UX for elderly users. Still, I want to share that it was at these moments strikes me, realising that the meaning of iconography may only exist under a certain education level and or an age group. Some of the norm that we’re exposed everyday may not be the same to some people that the product is engaging with. That is why it’s so crucial for us, as a product designer, to know who we’re designing for and to ensure user testing with our target audience.