Mr. Atsushi Masuda of DeNA Co., Ltd. (E-Commerce Business Headquarters, Hobby Club)
Speaking of DeNA, "Mobage" and Yokohama DeNA Baystars have a strong impression, but the company started with the auction service "Bidders" (currently "DeNA Shopping"), and before the birth of Hobby Club, Mobage and e-commerce sites, and provided services targeting young people to people in their 30s.
In the midst of all this, the hobbyist club started a service that said, "In the future, I want to provide an online service for older generations." Tomoko Namba, the founder of DeNA and the current director (president at the time), and the representative of Club Tourism met and started the project. The aim was to bring together the know-how of Club Tourism's travel information magazine "Tabi no Tomo" and DeNA's online service and maximize it.
From around 2005, before the birth of the Hobby Club, many services for seniors were born as the baby boomer generation reached retirement age. However, many of the baby boomers continued to work, and the Lehman shock of 2008 caused many of the services that were born around that time to disappear. Under such circumstances, what is the reason why the hobbyist club was chosen and survived?
"I was conscious of not having a preconceived notion that it was for seniors," said Mr. Masuda. People over 50 are younger than they used to be. The image of "senior" differs depending on the person, and the reality is that some people imagine the senior generation, but there are many people who are much younger and work two or three days a week. Within the hobbyist club, members have set up communities such as the Arashi fan club for those in their 60s and the ``women-only community'' for people in their 50s to 90s. It's so hard to tell the age.
There are many sites that are conscious of seniors and use large fonts or reduce the number of characters per page, but the hobbyist club does not do that. “Since we are a generation that reads newspapers, readability is more important than the size of the text. I am aware.”
At the beginning of the service, many people assumed that text with a blue underbar was clickable (linked) and that they would see illustrations and photos, so buttons were used as much as possible. Sometimes I was devising to change it to a text link without doing it. Recently, I don't even do that, and I'm making it the same as a general site. The final conclusion is that "those who do not receive special treatment will be able to use it comfortably."
Even in the image images posted on the site, photos of elderly people are not used. There was a time when it was used as the top page image, but after receiving an e-mail from a member scolding him that he was "not that old," he said he stopped using it. “People in their 50s and older have the impression that they are 5 to 7 years younger than their actual age.”
Mr. Masuda, who will turn 40 next year, creates opportunities to hear opinions and requests from members, such as accompanying him to events about once every two months in order to get a feel for the adult generation. . Mr. Masuda says, "Recently, I've come to regard reporting on the senior generation as my own." The final decision when making important site decisions is, "In 10 years, will I use this service?"