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Design Stage

Inclusive UX: From Gen-Z to Older Adults

September 18, 2025 9:30 AM
Long Lecture
🇬🇧 English
Wisła

About

When designing for a specific user group, we often tend to generalize, following assumptions, biases and stereotypes. So how do we design effectively to invite a use group and broaden our user base? How do we design for children and teenagers? How do we adjust our content and design for Gen-Z? What should we keep in mind for older adults? And what about people who have to make critical decisions under stress and time pressure? How should our products adapt for people who are deaf, autistic and neurodivergent?In this session, we’ll dive into practical design patterns to design better — and help everyone get their tasks done better and faster. With plenty of real-life examples and UX guidelines that you can apply to your work right away.You’ll learn:- The intricacies of designing for children and teenagers,

- How to adapt products for Gen-Z, from content to design,

- What to keep in mind when designing for older adults,

- How to help people minimize errors in stressful situations,

- How to design for people who are neurodivergent.

Talk by

Photo of Vitaly Friedman, Creative Lead at Smashing Media AG
Vitaly Friedman
Creative Lead at Smashing Media AG

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From the recording

Talk in brief

In this WaysConf 2025 presentation, Vitaly Friedman, Creative Lead at Smashing Media AG, explores the principles of inclusive UX design across different generations, from Gen-Z to older adults. Friedman argues that accessibility is not a mere compliance checklist but a fundamental commitment to keeping digital experiences usable for everyone. He examines the unique behavioral patterns and physical needs of various age groups, including children, teenagers, Gen-Z, and the aging population. Through practical examples and humorous critiques of modern web interfaces, Friedman demonstrates how to design for color blindness, mitigate motion sickness, and structure complex navigation systems. He emphasizes the business value of designing for older adults, who hold significant wealth but face age-related changes in vision and dexterity. Ultimately, Friedman advocates for intuitive, predictable design patterns—such as persistent text labels over ambiguous icons—to create digital products that are truly accessible to all users.

Key takeaways

  1. 01

    Inclusive Design is Not a Checklist

    Accessibility should be viewed as a continuous effort to keep digital experiences meaningful and usable for everyone, rather than a mere legal compliance exercise.

    Watch from 10:08
  2. 02

    Avoid Relying Solely on Color

    With millions of people experiencing color blindness or weakness, interfaces must use shapes, outlines, or alternative views instead of relying only on red and green to convey critical information.

    Watch from 14:17
  3. 03

    Respect Physics in Motion Design

    To prevent motion sickness, which affects around 30% of users, designers should avoid jarring mismatches between user scrolling and screen movement, and provide controls to skip or pause animations.

    Watch from 25:40
  4. 04

    Gen-Z Expects Accessibility by Default

    Gen-Z is the first generation to treat inclusion, accessibility, and authenticity as default expectations, preferring features like closed captions, social logins, and verified reviews.

    Watch from 33:10
  5. 05

    Design for the Aging Population's Wealth and Needs

    Older adults hold significant wealth but face age-related changes in vision, dexterity, and cognition, making clear text labels, large touch targets, and predictable navigation essential.

    Watch from 43:11
Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

Redefining Accessibility and Personas

Accessibility and inclusive design should not be treated as a mere compliance checklist to tick off boxes. Instead, they represent a continuous effort to keep digital experiences meaningful and usable for as many people as possible. There is no such thing as an 'average user' because everyone exists on a continuum of abilities. Many organizations, such as Booking.com and the UK Ministry of Justice, embed inclusive design by analyzing how permanent, temporary, and situational limitations affect user interaction. By visualizing how people with different abilities interact with a product, teams can build empathy and design better solutions without relying on dry legal arguments.

Watch from 10:01

Designing Beyond Red and Green

Color blindness is a widespread phenomenon affecting over 300 million people worldwide. A common mistake in interface design, especially in financial applications, is relying solely on red and green to communicate critical data. For users with red, green, or blue color weaknesses, these colors can look identical, making the interface unusable. To solve this, design systems should adopt a 'monotone-first' approach, establishing hierarchy through shades, textures, and outlines before adding color. Adding distinct shapes or providing alternative views, such as data tables or list views, ensures that information remains accessible to everyone.

Watch from 13:55

Mitigating Motion Sickness in Web Animation

Motion sickness affects roughly 30% of the population and occurs when there is a conflict between what a user sees on a screen and what they physically feel. Jarring scroll effects, unexpected swiping requirements, and chaotic animations create highly disorienting experiences. To design accessible motion, interfaces must respect physics and avoid unexpected directional shifts. Designers should provide clear controls to pause, play, or skip animations entirely, allowing users to jump directly to the end state. Keeping animations predictable and giving users control over the movement prevents discomfort and keeps the experience usable.

Watch from 20:54

Understanding Gen-Z's Digital Habits

Gen-Z is the first generation to treat accessibility, inclusion, and authenticity as default expectations rather than optional additions. They are highly diverse and have unique digital behaviors, often operating on a mobile-only basis. They have very little patience, typically spending only 30 to 40 seconds evaluating a landing page. Gen-Z heavily relies on social proof, trusting verified reviews and influencer recommendations over traditional marketing. They also prefer social logins for rapid authentication and almost universally keep closed captions or subtitles turned on by default, even when viewing content in their native language.

Watch from 33:06

Designing for the Wealth and Needs of Older Adults

The aging population represents a massive market, with over a billion people aged 60 and older who often possess significant wealth and active lifestyles. However, they are frequently ignored or oversimplified by designers who assume they cannot use technology. As users age, they experience physical changes such as reduced dexterity, difficulty focusing on close objects, and challenges distinguishing between similar colors like blue and purple. For industries like fintech, designing for older adults is crucial for business survival. Interfaces must accommodate these changes by avoiding temporary toast messages, using large touch targets, and ensuring high contrast.

Watch from 40:34

The Pitfalls of Icon-Only Navigation

Many complex applications suffer from an overabundance of icons, operating under the assumption that users will eventually learn and remember what they mean. In reality, while users might learn icons through daily use, they forget their meanings just as quickly after a short break or vacation. Icon-only menus are highly ambiguous and difficult to scan. Testing shows that replacing icons with persistent, clear text labels—even if they wrap to multiple lines—significantly improves usability. Text labels eliminate the cognitive load of memorizing abstract symbols, allowing users to scan and navigate interfaces much more efficiently.

Watch from 48:16
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