> You should design with your mother in mind<p>If you're a guy, you know those prototypical ads that show the incompetent male who can't fix something/clean properly/file taxes, and then the wife/girlfriend shows up and saves the day?<p>I imagine this meme of the incompetent mother who doesn't understand computers must feel the same way for women.
> She yells at her computer, doesn't know what a twitter is, and struggles to find windows she's minimized.<p>> You should design with your mother in mind. If she can't understand your site, others will struggle as well.<p>I'm not sure your mother represents the average user, and likely does not fit the target demographic of most web sites/applications.<p>Maybe I'm missing something...but how is this useful? I get that we should all design for actual people. But most of the time, "most people" (and perhaps more importantly, most paying customers) aren't going to be your mom (or people like her).
This is starting to cross the border beyond a fun idea you want to share and just slightly changing your business model and pimping HackerNews for publicity (again).
A service that is desperately needed.<p>Ever try and get your grandparents to use an iPad? Your grandparents defeated the Nazis, they're pretty fucking awesome people. And then you have to humble them with some stupid, ""Swipe up to get to the settings..." They're like, "Why can't we just have a button?" And they're right.<p>Too much design today relies on gestures that make no sense. Font sizes are way too small / don't scale / weren't tested with large fonts. Integration with services that not everyone has heard of. Thumb readers that don't even work for elderly users. It's all gotten a bit out of hand.<p>In any event, this is a good way to validate the complexity, and get ideas on where your marketing / education materials are weak.<p>Hiring the elderly for QA is a great idea.