My dad (early 80s) struggles with tech in general, including the iPad and iPhone. Many in his peer group use touchscreen devices with fewer issues.

This is what I noticed from trying to teach him how to use the interfaces:

1 - He refuses to mentally process what the icons represent and ignores the text label below them. I thought switching them to Chinese would help, but he'd struggle with some of the terms, as they were unfamiliar to him. For a person his age and background, "address book" is more meaningful than "contacts".

2 - He wants to memorize locations and steps as opposed to using intuition via #1. This sometimes helped, but there would be occasional pitfalls, i.e., an unintentional gesture pulls him out of what he's doing and then he just doesn't doesn't know how to get back.

I tried switching him to an old school feature phone (one of the newer Nokia remakes), but even that's a struggle, as there's simply too much UI, and I notice rocker buttons confuse the hell out of him. Many of these devices are marketed to seniors (and pretty much have the same interface and functions) but I don't think they were really tested with seniors.

My dad doesn't have or use the Internet, and he's starting to get left behind as large companies are trying to move away from snail mail for things like bills, etc.