When Age Matters in Designing a Product and When it Doesn't

Cover photo: Daniel Cheung, Unsplash

In the last couple of years, when being initiated into a new design project, I was told a few times that my work should be aimed at Gen Z or Millennials. Vaguely enough, often there was no substantial reasoning for choosing a particular demographic cohort or any other details about the target audience, leading to long conversations attempting to understand the client's thinking.

Mostly, I hear something about Zoomers being better at adapting to new technologies or the desire to serve people with shared values often expressed by individuals older than the target audience that they envision for their product. Also, the idea that Gen Zers have better visual taste pops up from time to time.

I see no problem in startup founders and product managers limiting their target audience by age when it's with good reason. I frequently find, though, that thinking about age in regard to designing a product comes based on the wrong premises while the right premises get ignored.

The question of age and generational theories is a predominantly complex matter. In the rather narrow field of design it's multidimensional too.

The Birth of Generational Labels

Headlines like "Generation Z this" and "Boomers that" can be seen all over mass media. I also frequently encounter memes about generational features and differences on TikTok. It seems that we are experiencing a great deal of brainwashing about generational labels on a daily basis. No wonder, the conversation about generations occasionally emerges.

The buzz around generations is rooted in works of Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim and American authors William Strauss and Neil Howe. Mannheim formulated his highly influential theory of generations in 1928, stating that people are considerably impacted by the socio-historical circumstances of their youth. Strauss and Howe, working as a duo, applied Mannheim's ideas to American society in their book "Generations: The History of America's Future".

When we hear about boomers, zoomers, millennials, and alphas, these words are referencing the Strauss-Howe classification, hence the terminology is not universal and can hardly be employed outside of the American market anyway. It's not the main problem, though.

Generational Divide Is Misleading

I believe that socio-historical circumstances impact people indeed. Nonetheless, I don’t think this idea is enough to put individuals into boxes based on age and pronounce them to have similar features and behaviors because of that.

The main problem with the generational theory is that it has no hypotheses that can be tested, thus it’s just an appealing speculation. If we look at thoroughly done research, there's more evidence that generational segregation is meaningless than any verification of it.

For instance, according to Valuegraphics, less than 20% of individuals within the same generation agree on their values, and this is true across all parts of the world. Researchers, who tried to assess differences in workplace attitude among generations, found no substantial differences.

In 2021 Professor Bobby Duffy, a renowned British social researcher, published the book "The Generation Myth", debunking a lot of common stereotypes about generations. In May 2023 the famous Pew Research Center announced that it would stop using generational labels due to their meaninglessness.

I sometimes encounter these labels when scrolling through TikTok memes. Funnily enough, in the memes stereotypes are being attributed all over the place, making it hard to comprehend how exactly zoomers, millennials, and boomers are different. Moreover, in the comment section people often write that if the meme is correct, they don't belong to their generation.

My hypothesis is that the hype around generations is artificially blown up by mass media and overshadows the real problem — insufficiency of communication. It looks like people find it easier to label others in an attempt to understand their behaviour rather than learning to communicate and be a good listener. I bet that we can overcome a lot of "generational differences" if we all learn to communicate better.

Approach to Age in Design

Designing a product and all the experience around it is a complex task. One needs to think about how the product is going to be experienced by customers on multiple levels, including the logic behind the interface, the look of the interface, and the marketing materials. The conversation about the age of the target audience may pop up at any of these levels.

It makes sense to aim at a particular generation, when the product is indeed intended for people within a narrow age bracket. However, even within the chosen cohort, there are going to be very different people with diverse preferences, tastes, and values.

Based on my experience, most often, when a client says that they need design appealing to Gen Z, they mean that they want something trendy regarding the visual side of the project. For example, a font that is currently overexploited by all edgy fashion brands or is popular on Dribbble.

Trends are fine, but they are tricky. Today they are in, tomorrow they are out, and you are paying for one redesign after another. It makes more sense to define values and ideas that you want to channel through the visuals and how it can differentiate you from competitors. These things may have very little to do with customers' age or with trends.

Conversely, I feel that we talk about age insufficiently when it comes to usability and accessibility. If you are creating a product for a broad audience, it makes sense to care about users of all ages. Otherwise, you have a chance to never reach some of your potential customers or scare them away.

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of senior US citizens owning a smartphone and using social media is constantly growing. Seniors are gradually adapting to the digital age, but they still perceive interfaces differently in comparison to younger generations.

For instance, a recent Markswebb's research shows that while younger users easily understand the functionality behind a button consisting of an icon only, a text button or a button combining an icon with text is the best option if you want to make an interface easy to comprehend and use for people of all ages between 16 and 65.

Don Norman, the co-founder of the legendary Nielsen Norman Group, is almost 90 years old himself, and two years ago he reminded us that the world designed with no consideration of the needs of the seniors may feel isolating for this demographic. For instance, they may need a bigger font size to be able to read it from the screen with comfort and communicate via a messenger with their grandkids.

To be honest, I feel a bit of anxiety because of the media's mindless overexploitation of generational labels. It leads to nothing but ageism which may already be working against our parents and will work against us in the future. We all – startup founders, product owners, developers, designers, marketers, etc. – have our share of impact on the world, in our power to make it a better place.