Designing for older users: what SeniorConnect taught me
What building SeniorConnect USA, a platform for readers over 50, taught me about type, contrast, tap targets, and writing that respects the reader.
Design for the reader with the least patience for friction, and you have not designed a narrower product. You have designed a more honest one. That is the short version of what building SeniorConnect USA taught me: a brand and design system for Americans over 50 comparing internet and the home services around it. Almost nothing on that platform is exotic. Bigger type, calmer contrast, bigger targets, plainer words. What is not obvious until you build it is how much of that "obvious" list gets quietly traded away under deadline pressure, and how a system stops that trade from happening screen by screen.
The reader who sets the brief
SeniorConnect exists so someone over 50 can compare and choose home internet, and the services around it, without needing a grandchild on the phone. That reader is specific in ways that matter for every decision after it: often low vision, unsteady on a touchscreen, phone-first, jargon-averse, and frequently in a bilingual household. None of that is a constraint you accommodate after the fact. It is the brief itself. Design for that reader, and the page works. Design for a generic reader and adjust down later, and it quietly does not.
The clearest place this showed up was in who appears on the page. The photography direction was explicit before a single screen existed: real seniors, active aging, every kind of person, no dated props like holiday lights or antique phones. The filter I wrote for it was blunt on purpose: if a photo could be on the cover of a mainstream lifestyle magazine, not a brochure, use it. The first face on a page tells a reader whether the product is for them, before they have read a word.
The floor every screen clears
16px body, 44px targets, white background
- The common baseline, tuned for an average reader on an average day.
- Meets the WCAG minimum and stops there.
18px body, 52px targets, warm cream paper
- Above the WCAG minimum on purpose, sized for unsteady taps and tired eyes.
- Body set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, the Braille Institute's low-vision typeface, drawn so a lowercase l, a numeral 1, and a capital I cannot be confused.
The system calls this the floor: the minimums every screen has to clear before any brand decision is allowed to happen on top of it. 18px body instead of the usual 16, so default copy is comfortable without anyone reaching for browser zoom. 52px minimum tap targets, above the 44px WCAG minimum, sized for a hand with tremor rather than a hand with precision. Copy set on warm cream rather than harsh white, so it stays legible without the glare that tires older eyes over a long reading session. None of these numbers are generous by accident. Each one is a response to a specific failure mode: small type that gets skipped, small targets that get mis-tapped, and glare that makes a technically-passing contrast ratio unpleasant to actually read.
For this audience, readable is not a nice-to-have. It is the product.
The rule that decided the floor before any screen existed
Rules learned the hard way
The system did not arrive this clean. It carries a standards document written from corrections caught in review, and the pattern in each correction was the same: a comfortable default turned out to be an accessibility risk for this specific reader.
Two structural choices came out of the same discipline. Long pages carry a sticky "In this guide" contents bar, so nobody gets lost partway down a page about fiber speeds or plan pricing. And any dense, technical section gets a plain-language callout answering "what does this mean for seniors?" directly, translating the jargon rather than just printing it next to a definition. Both are small pieces of interface. Both exist because the reader who needs them will not ask for them; they will just leave.
Warmth that still passes contrast
The palette went through a real pivot. An earlier direction, internally called Calm Clinic, hit every accessibility number and still felt like a waiting room. It was reworked into what the system now calls Sunlit Porch: the same senior-first foundations, generous type, calm contrast, big targets, recolored around a warm sunflower and terracotta rather than clinical grey. The type sizes and target sizes did not move. What moved was whether the product felt like it was for someone, rather than at someone.
That distinction is the part of this project I would defend hardest to a team in a hurry: accessibility and warmth were never competing budgets here. They were the same decision, checked twice. A warm color still has to clear the same contrast pair as a cold one before it is allowed near body text, and Sunlit Porch's palette was built against that constraint from the start rather than adjusted into it afterward. This is the kind of foundation-level work I take on through accessibility audits when a team already has a product and needs the floor established under it rather than bolted on top.
What this means for other products
Almost none of this is specific to a platform for readers over 50. Bigger type helps someone reading on a cracked phone screen in bright sun. Bigger targets help anyone with a full hand of grocery bags. Plain language helps a reader in their second language as much as it helps a reader unfamiliar with telecom jargon. SeniorConnect's reader is simply the version of every user who is having a harder day than the design tool assumes, made explicit instead of left as an edge case nobody designed for.
What the project actually teaches is not a new set of numbers. It is that a floor like this only holds if it is written down as a system rather than left as a preference each designer applies inconsistently. The full picture, the reasoning behind each number and the standards doc it lives in, is in the SeniorConnect USA case study.
Takeaways
Treat the hardest reader as the brief, not as an edge case to accommodate later. Set numbers above the legal minimum on purpose, and tie each one to a specific failure it prevents rather than to a general sense of caution. Write corrections down as rules the moment you catch them, so the same mistake does not ship twice. And check that warmth and accessibility are never competing budgets; a good palette clears the same contrast pair twice, once for the number and once for how it actually feels to read.
How do you design for users over 50?
Set the reader's actual constraints, low vision, unsteady taps, jargon aversion, as the brief itself rather than an adjustment made after the main design is done. Then hold every screen to a floor above the legal minimum.
Does designing for older users mean a less attractive product?
No. SeniorConnect's warm palette and its accessibility floor are the same decision, not a trade against each other. A color only enters the system once it clears contrast.
What is the minimum tap target size for older users?
SeniorConnect's system sets 52px, above the 44px WCAG minimum, specifically for unsteady taps and tremor.
One related read, on why this discipline does not have to cost a team velocity: how to design for accessibility without slowing the team down.