". . . if it's easier to use and it speaks to their needs, they'll love it. And if something is easier for a 65-year-old to use, it's going to be easier for a 35-year-old to use."

- Marc Hottenroth

What are the usability needs of retirees? Some of Nielsen's heuristics on usability for seniorssuggested the following [1]:

• At least 12 pt. type, sans serif and good contrast for legibility
• No moving parts
• Easy clickability
• No Unforgiving forms (e.g. when mis-typing a hyphen or special character messes up the form)

Here are some additional heurstics from an NIH report on making Websites senior-friendly [2]:

• Reduced dexterity (eg. arthritis) may require no hard to control drop-down menus
• Easy workflow / ability to keeping track of where you are within an app (e.g. breadcrumbs and consistent layout)
• Plenty of whitespace and uncluttered pages
• Good feedback (e.g. audio cues for navigation)

Along with the iOS Human Interface Guidelines [3], our goal was to keep the above usability heuristics in mind during design.

[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/seniors.html

[2] http://www.nih.gov/icd/od/ocpl/resources/wag/documents/checklist.pdf

[3] iOS Human Interface Guidelines