Seniors and Perception of Tech

I have been teaching seniors how to use tech for a very long time, slightly more than 20 years. (Longer if you consider the tech support as well as offical training) One of the things that I have noted is how Seniors and Perception of Tech is very different from everyone else. They are totally blind to anything with a screen.

I have been talking about “Screen blindness” in my senior tech classes for years. I have many stories about it. However this year we had a new example that has directly hit our bank account.

Great digital sign I can change REMOTELY and nobody saw it.

I have been using a digital signs to talk about our product and services since we opening the Mac Repair Shop. It is basically a slideshow on an old iMac that plays what ever images are in a folder as a screen saver. This has always had a list of our upcoming classes. And nobody cared.

When we expanded to Lithgow Tech Services to do PC Repairs and PC Retail Sales we continued the same concept showing the latest products and classes in that window as well. We even added an Apple TV to the digital ads of our classes. Tried different font, animation, catchy phrases and even flashing lights.

Nothing… nobody cared.

Almost like Seniors Perception of Tech prevented them from seeing the sign.

But then we wrote the next class on a whiteboard… WOW

You would not think that something so simple as writing the class on a whiteboard would get so much attention! But it does! Even with my bad handwriting and grammar people are asking about the classes. SENIORS are asking about the computer classes.

But why is a single unprofessional whiteboard getting more attention to the digital signs that do the exact same thing. (Mostly word for word and can be seen in the dark) BECAUSE SENIORS IGNORE TECH!

Seniors just assume that if its on a screen they do not understand

In my classes we see this all the time. A senior in one of my classes will tell me over and over they do not know what the instructions on the screen says even when they would have no problem if the same set of instructions were on paper. However I had no idea this was something that extended to advertising my classes.

To be fair we have noted that we have been building a better reputation and we do have a larger following on Facebook.

This shows that we do UNDERSTAND seniors

Our Senior classes keeps this in mind. Our classes we try to break seniors out of the idea that they do not understand tech and show them ways to look at tech differently.