How Long Can We Keep Learning?
What does this have to do with UX Research?
Related to Our Own Learning Process
If you’ve ever thought about changing jobs, careers, reinventing yourself professionally (as I did, and many other UX folks), perhaps starting a business, or simply learning something new, age might have been a concern, a limitation for you or someone around you. I hope these lines contribute to that perspective.
This topic is close to me. If you don’t know me, I previously dedicated myself to another aspect of professional work as a psychologist, seeing patients in psychotherapy and spending part of my time supporting research related to early childhood. A bit different from what I do today, but not that much. In my mid-30s, I decided to make a change, to go all in on a career shift. I joined Laboratoria’s Bootcamp, and it was the best decision. In the Bootcamp, most people were in their 20s, but there were some of us in our 30s, and a few in their 40s. How wonderful is that? The motivation to learn and generate changes in our lives has no age.
But at that time, we didn’t know everything that would come next—they were just expectations and dreams. While I was at the Bootcamp, I remember someone told me, “good thing you’re doing it now because at 35 you stop learning”…
It would never have occurred to me that one stops learning at some point. My parents, in their late 60s, dedicate their weekends to reading and learning, but it seems there are certain widespread ideas and myths that there is indeed an age limit for learning.
Now, several years after that comment, I started looking for literature on the topic, and one of the things I found has to do with how aging is portrayed in the media. There’s been a positive change in recent years in how being older is shown, and this more positive portrayal influences how they are viewed by young people and, by themselves, improving self-esteem. The media helps us spread a conception of what it means to age, to be an adult, promoting or discarding stereotypes (Yläne, 2015).
Age, in that sense, is a social construction to which we all contribute, and in which the media shows us certain stereotypes, ideas, and expectations of what one should be, have, and do at different stages of the life cycle according to age. But those expectations, now obsolete, clash with new economic and demographic realities, as well as changes in people’s goals, values, and preferences. In that same study, they point to an increase in diversity within each age category that is accompanied by cumulative inequalities throughout all phases of life ([Kampen et al, 2023](http://así como a los cambios en las metas, los valores y las preferencias de las personas.)). There is no universal or local way of being young, young adult, or older adult—we are different because we make decisions, and our contexts are different.
These changing contexts and individual decisions produce surprising variations in the experiences of individuals of the same age in different time periods, and in the lives of those linked to them (Reference pending).
Neuroscience also has something to tell us:
“One of the great contributions of neuroscience to education is the growth mindset: the one that allows us to better face challenges by believing that our personal abilities can be developed.”
Anna Forés (Source: [ABC, 2012](http://realizar investigaciones donde seamos))
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend Carol Dweck’s TED Talk.
Carol Dweck’s TED Talk video.
How Long Can We Keep Learning? Related to Our Users
So far, I’ve covered learning on a personal level, as a constant, lifelong practice. Then I thought, can these expectations, ideas, and preconceptions of what I should be, or what a person in general “of a certain age, certain gender, from a certain place” should be, as experience designers, affect design decisions for our users because of age?: “they’re older and they won’t learn anymore,” or ideas like that.
That’s where I see the importance of becoming aware of our biases, which manifest when conducting user research, so that through deep research we can discover real pain points, expectations, and needs, and not “validate” the ones we imagine or believe they have, because my user “is a certain age, is a certain gender, lives in a certain area, etc.” Instead, we should be able to look beyond demographics to understand modes and contexts of life, and how our designs fit into that complexity.
If you’d like to share your experience and knowledge on this topic, I’d be happy to read/hear from you. You can leave your comment on the article post on LinkedIn at this link.