People Experience: Don’t be Mean to My Meemaw

For those who don’t know, Meemaw is my grandmother. She is the most gangsta grandmother today. She is very hip, knows all the cool movies and likes to break dance. Okay most of that is not true but she is a great grandmother. She is a tad old and just getting into this whole “internet” thing. Everything you know about the computer and internet that seems like common sense, she has NO idea.

meemaw and jerry

She and her bf Jerry (yea she is a little playa) use MSN Webtv for their computer. Yea I know.
Anyways, who has been mean to her? The people creating websites that she visits that don’t make them webtv compliant or realize Webtv users are browsing their website. This is a lady who uses the yellow pages to look up a business not search on Google. She has no idea about mashups. So what do people need to realize.

1- Tailor. Your site for the audience. If it is for older people: create bigger fonts, make it easy to understand & make it relevant for them.

2- Functionality. Webtv uses a remote to move around the screen. Try to make the functionality simple. You can track your stats to see if any webtv browsers are viewing your page. If they are you should probably create a way to send them to a special site that is more old people friendly.

3- Think. My grandmother had to ask me how to view the photos from my cousin’s bar mitzvah. The font matched the screen color so we couldn’t see anything. My grandmother was going to purchase $50+ in photos if only she could have seen what to do. Make sure to think about the people who could be using or spending money on your site.

She doesn’t know about this site but I will email her this article. I Love you Meemaw:)

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3 Responses to “People Experience: Don’t be Mean to My Meemaw”

  • Sri
    July 20th, 2006
    2:45 pm

    I worked as a Web Developer for this dot com start up subscription service….All our subscribers were PC users (around 50,000) except for 3 individuals who used MAC’s.

    Something on the website did not work correctly…So I was assigned the task to fix it. It took me over a month to fix the problem which caters to only 3 people. (Plus we also had to buy a MAC to see what the problem was)

    The subscription service was around $20 a month…was it worth it for the company to fix their website to cater to these 3 people? I guess in a way yes…because we may have gotten more MAC users. The fix on the subscription site was not a major component of the website….

    Well, in a nutshell…the company closed its doors by the year end…(it was during the 2001-02 dotcom bubble).

    Ur damned if u do, and ur damned if u dont.

  • Nick Gavronsky
    July 20th, 2006
    6:17 pm

    Hah, I didnt even know msntv/web was still around. I guess thats why many websites dont cater to it anymore. People probably didnt think in today’s day and age people would still be using it. Also, from personal experience (my parents), they find many websites difficult to use and navigate.

  • Life With Women » Archive » Grandma tech
    July 21st, 2006
    12:02 pm

    [...] Noah brought up a visually amusing situation yesterday: his grandmother surfing the web with MSNtv. As soon as he mentioned bigger fonts I quickly saw flashes of oversized playing cards, telephones with buttons bigger than my hand and 4 pairs of glasses around the house depending on at what distance something needs to be read. [...]

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