A similar 'experiment' with similar results is landing page optimization. You want to be very clear what you're trying to communicate and what you want the visitor to do with as few distractions as possible.
It turns out the same types of optimizations that you make on a landing page are good UI/UX features for past-middle-aged people to use. Computers don't have to be hard, we just put everything on the screen and have the user sort through what each thing does and whether it's in or out of context for the current action.
Especially with landing pages I aim for the 'mum' test. She's in her 60s and is petrified of computers. If someone like her understands what has to be done / the messaging is clear / the flow of the page directs her to do what I want, it'll probably be a success.
Anecdotally I remember being on a call with my dad (in his 60s) trying to talk him through downloading and installing some antivirus software from download.com (or whatever it was back a few years back). Frustratingly it kept going wrong - "I'm pressing to the download button, but it's just not working!" Except he wasn't. Eventually we figured out he was clicking a banner ad because it "looked like a button," far more so than the flat, actual download button. On a site like that, I often wonder whether it's entirely by design. Happy advertisers get more clicks (albeit probably with shitty conversion), happy site owners get to charge more knowing they provide more clicks. Everyone wins. Except my 65 year old dad.
Eventually we figured out he was clicking a banner ad because it "looked like a button," far more so than the flat, actual download button. On a site like that, I often wonder whether it's entirely by design.
Most certainly yes. In fact, recognition of "false download buttons", and almost instinctively and subconsciously ignoring them in the same manner as banner ads, comes with experience such that there have been times when I've been confused by pages where the real download button looks exactly like the bloated fake ones that I've become accustomed to mentally filtering out. I find that when I'm looking to download something, I tend to go towards direct links that actually show a destination URL when you over over them, vs. buttons that don't.
More often than not, the landing page represents the internal (dis)organization of business units vying for the most valuable visual real estate (e.g. sales team wants contact info, marketing team wants clickable advertisements, etc) and designers hands are forced to oblige by senior management. These distractions are constant battles that take tons of time iterating placement and user testing to get right from a UX perspective and often is neglected. Usability testing gets most of the low hanging fruit given a sufficient sample size.
It turns out the same types of optimizations that you make on a landing page are good UI/UX features for past-middle-aged people to use. Computers don't have to be hard, we just put everything on the screen and have the user sort through what each thing does and whether it's in or out of context for the current action.