Rebooting The Tech User Experience For The Elderly: Christine Rohacz (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Christine Rohacz’s talk titled “Rebooting The Tech User Experience For The Elderly” at TEDxBoulder 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Picture this, you’re 75 years old and life looks pretty different nowadays. You like 90% of other people your age have chosen to age at home and things are different. You don’t get out to run and ski as much as you used to, but you still get out every day for plenty of walks and bike rides with friends that live around you.

You have a lot more doctor’s appointments now, three to four a week, but it’s not a problem because public transportation takes you directly to them and technology has gotten so advanced it brings healthcare directly to your home.

Speaking of technology, you once fought with it for hours on end, but today it’s been built for you and your 70-year-old friends. It’s changed your life and it’s even helped you find a part-time job that you have mentoring the next generation in the career you spent 30, 40 years building. You’re living out your golden years and they are truly golden. You’ve probably figured out by now that’s not reality.

The Harsh Reality

That’s not what it looks like for most 75 years old today if you’re lucky enough to make it to that age and the reality is a lot harsher. Every day in the U.S., 10,000 people turn 65, that’s 3.6 million annually. Collectively, people over the age of 65 make up nearly 20% of the U.S. population. Soon they will outnumber individuals under the age of 18 and each one of them costs more to take care of than an individual under the age of 18.

Cost is a major concern. Most of them won’t be able to afford long-term healthcare or retirement communities if and when they decide they need one. And the government is already panicking because they know that by 2037 trust fund reserves for Social Security will have run out and they need to find new sources of funding. I believe there’s an issue that’s just as big as cost though, one we often ignore and that is loneliness.

The Issue of Loneliness

One in four adults over the age of 65 today are considered lonely or socially isolated. One in four. And when you’re categorized into that bucket, your risk of Alzheimer’s has just gone up by 50%. What comes with loneliness and social isolation is often depression and anxiety. Men over the age of 65 in the U.S. today have the highest overall rate of suicide.

If this situation sounds dire and unsettling to you, it’s because it really is. And it’s terrifying. These are our loved ones, our family, friends, and we’re letting them down.

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Personal Experiences

So what am I doing? I’m 29 years old. I’m standing up here lecturing you about what it’s like to age. And no, I haven’t retired and I haven’t cracked the secret to longevity, but a series of events started happening a number of months ago and I just started paying attention.

The first was when my mom was actually at my parents’ home in San Diego and she was out on a walk like she frequently does and she took a fall. And the fall was pretty jarring because it was going to take some time for her to recover. And she’s a very active person, so this changed what her life was going to look like for a little bit. But it was also jarring to me because society has conditioned me to believe that this is what happens as you start to age. You take more falls, the falls get riskier, and what was our future going to look like?

And a few weeks later, I was actually there myself and I was out for a walk and I fell. And it was right then and there that I realized how terrible the public infrastructure was. The sidewalks were narrow, non-existent in places, forcing you to walk on the street that was full of cracks and potholes and terrifying drivers, and it didn’t really matter so much what your age was because anybody was just as likely to fall.

Technology Lessons

So fast forward a few months and I’m back in Boulder and you see I’m an aspiring entrepreneur and I find myself teaching technology lessons at retirement communities. I’m a software engineer. I felt there was a need.

And my first lesson is on ride-sharing apps. And I’m standing in a room, maybe 80, mid-80-year-olds who have never used a ride-sharing app before. For them, they have not driven themselves in years, and the promise of a ride-sharing app is truly life-altering.

But as I take out their phones to try and explain how to use it, I find myself stumbling. It looks like this. And I find myself saying, “Just ignore this, ignore that, that’s not actually how you book a ride, you don’t need to pay attention to that.” And as a software engineer myself, I’m embarrassed. I’m horrified. Because I realized right then and there, it’s very clear that nobody has either tested this thing on anybody of that generation.

Lack of Consideration for Older Adults

And it’s not just the ride-sharing apps. I started paying attention to other technologies, and I realized very clearly how many of them had excluded user testing on 55+. And I even contacted friends who worked at these tech companies, and I asked them to verify, and surely enough, they told me they have no department focusing on the 55-plus generation, and they don’t care to.

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That’s 20% of our population growing towards 25, mind you, and they’re leaving it out. And that’s the problem right there. No one cared to even ask them. No one cared to ask them what they thought, how they would use it, or anything about their opinion.

Valuing Older Adults’ Perspectives

And so I started to do something differently.

I started to care. I started to find just about anybody I met with gray hair, and I started to ask them questions. I started with, “Who are you? Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your life.” And I learned an incredible amount from them. I learned from women who were the first software engineers in their industry, and I learned what it was like to pave the way for me.

And I learned what it was like to be an immigrant in this country and grow a business from nothing for 30 or 40 years and become successful. I learned what it was like to lose your life partner after 40 years of marriage and to watch them die. I learned what it was like to watch your kids’ lives on the line and to not know if they’re going to make it on the other side. Collectively, people of this generation taught me more than anybody in my generation ever could, and I’m so grateful for that.

The Power of Asking a Second Question

But the secret to these conversations was that I asked more than one question, because you see, when you go in with the intention to ask one question, you often stop right there. You have no incentive to listen. You have no incentive to carry on the conversation.

And when you go in with the intention to ask a second question, you have to listen. You have to listen empathetically, and you have to be prepared to ask a follow-up. And you often find yourself asking a third or a fourth question you never even knew you had.

Insights from Listening

And so it was with that second question that I discovered even more than just who they were. For example, I learned that as you age, your vision actually changes. You can no longer see the same color spectrum you once did.

Light colors become really white. And so as a software engineer, I started designing really high-contrast color schemes, because that’s what 20% of the population needed. I also learned that your finger dexterity changes, making it really frustrating or nearly impossible to press small icons and text on a mobile device.

So as a software engineer, I started developing larger text and buttons, because that’s what 20% of the population needed. I started organizing social events for adults 65 plus, and we found ourselves in restaurants where the music was so incredibly loud that you could not even have a natural conversation and none of them wanted to come back. And so I would ask restaurant owners, “Can we turn the music down?” Because that’s what 20% of the population needed.

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Ageism in the Workplace

And in fact, it benefited me, too. We don’t need music that loud. And I learned how ageism terribly discriminated against anybody pretty much over the age of 40 in our workplaces. It was terrible, the stories I heard about how hard it was to get a job for people who not only wanted to work, but some of them who had reached an age and a point in their life where they still needed to work.

And so I hired them, and I saw the tremendous value that they brought every day. And it became clear to me where the cracks in our society now are lying. We gave up on teaching the older generation technology because we deemed it too difficult for them.

Our Responsibility

But guess what? We made it too difficult. And we gave up on inviting them into social events and dinners because we said the environment was too uncomfortable for them. But guess what? We made it incredibly uncomfortable. And we gave up on inviting them into our lives and to our workplaces because we said they have no value anymore. And I could not tell you you were more wrong if you have ever thought that.

The rest of this is geared towards everybody in the audience under the age of 60, because you have the power to actually change this. I want you to think for a moment of what the older generation has given you. Maybe they’ve paid for your college tuition.

Maybe they’ve brought you to this country and they’ve raised you. Maybe they’ve built the very foundation that your career sits upon today. And maybe they just listened to your cries when you were younger. And now ask yourselves, what are you giving them in return?

A Simple Request

My ask of you is very simple. My ask is for you to find the people with gray hair, with wrinkles, and with a lifetime of wisdom to share. And to lean into those conversations and to always ask a second question. Because asking that second question today may change what the future may look like for you. Thank you.