The other day I was looking through my pretty Mint stats and came across a depressing figure: 16% of visits to my site are from IE6. After seeing this terrible number the usual IE6-shock thoughts went through my head: “WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE”, “HOW DOES THIS BROWSER STILL DOMINATE?”, “16% OF VISITORS FAIL”, “I NEED AN ADULT”, etc.

Like most things, I let this slip to the back of my mind and didn’t think much of it.

Then I had an eye-opening experience yesterday. Someone showed me an extremely cumbersome web interface for their work and I immediately noticed that they were using IE6. From the conversation that ensued I came to two conclusions:

1. When you work in a field like web development/design the things you do can brush off on people you know, so that in time friends/family have at the very least heard the term HTML or IE, right? You get so used to this type of thing that it really catches you off-guard when you’re talking to someone who actually has no concept of what ‘coding’ or ‘designing’ actually is or what IE stands for.
2. There are people out there, under the age of 30 who think everyone uses IE and have no idea that there exists two major versions above IE6.

It was truly hilarious (and frightening) to hear the words ‘everyone uses IE’ from someone using a computer with IE6. It makes me think a little different about demographics and target audiences.

How do you deal with a segment of society that is young, but not necessarily internet-savvy (beyond hotmail, ask jeeves, and facebook)?

Shudder.