zlacker

> Many of my older extended family members have a single email account shared by a husband and wife. Or in one case the way to email my aunt is to send an email to an account operated by a daughter in a different town. Aunt and daughter are both signed in so the daughter can help with attachments or “emails that go missing”, etc.

As usual with the "personas" scenarios, people creates their unrealistic scenario (just like when talking about UX or design). These personas you are describing will probably fall back to low-tech methods in most of the cases, they won't fail to take a plane because GMail locked them out due to unusual activity when they are trying to show the ticket QR in the airport. They will just print it (or have someone print it for them) beforehand.

> The seaman in this scenario has a smartphone with the email signed in. It’s also signed in on the family computer at home. Both the wife and him send email from it. Maybe a kid does to from a tablet. This isn’t that difficult.

You just missed to add that they use their shared email to communicate between them by using the "Sent" folder. To be more realistic, the seaman right after buying his Android phone will create without realizing a new Google account because he doesn't probably know that he could use the email account he is already using at home. But, enough with made-up examples to prove our own points.

>>darkwa+(OP)
This is amazing. He just spelled out for you in great detail the sort of problems that arise in practice in the real world every day and you dismissed them out of hand as being unrealistic. I think you are far more sheltered and far less experienced than you realize. This sort of attitude is exactly what leads to these sorts of things becoming problems in the first place!

> They will just print it (or have someone print it for them) beforehand.

Yes, they will do that precisely because they do not trust technology to work for them because it frequently does not! I have family members like this. I log in to their accounts on my devices for various reasons. Even worse, I run Linux. We run in to these problems frequently. Spend time helping technically illiterate people with things. While doing so, make a concerted effort to understand why they say or think some of the things that they do.

Edit to add, I find it amusing that you make fun of his seaman example. Almost that exact scenario (in terms of number of devices, shared devices, and locations) is currently the case for two of my relatives. Two! And yet you ridicule it.