My parents are 20 years younger than this aunt and if I introduced these types of changes to make it "easier" for them, I would have to help them out even more. My mother would have even bigger technophobic breakdowns because of her not understanding how things work. And if anything, she would love to revert back to 1980s technology that is straight forward instead of having to learn some high-tech magic voice assistant of teh phuture to change the channel.<p>I say, keep it simple, keep it familiar. I am 100% sure this will backfire.
In my experience with my elderly parents this absolutely won't work. If anything it's more complex since different things, are now hidden in one magic box. She probably won't understand that e.g. Netflix and Hulu are different things. Or how to navigate back if some app gets stuck somewhere.... Also at some point there will be an update of some part of this that breaks everything.
As people grow older they want less complexity not more, doubtful the aunt appreciates it as much as the op.<p>For everyone else looking to consolidate a settop box and tv to a no bullshit remote highly recommend<p><a href="https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes/urc-6820-zapper#/step-1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes/urc-6820-zapper#...</a><p>Gone are all the superfluous netflix or change input buttons that make your parents stuck and generate support calls.<p>You configure the remote for tv and when thats done you (optionaly) configure it for the settop box. At that point only the dedicated TV power button goes to tv all other keys go directly to the settop box and theres very few of them with comfortable size and best rubber quality i've seen in a remote ever.<p>The settopbox/tv compatibility list is not published online but spans decades and i had no problem setting up a noname one that wasn't even on the list.
Something irks me the wrong way about mindsets like the one that the author of the article has, it's like they're refusing agency and independence to their older relatives.<p>What's wrong with they want to have soap-operas running in the background all the time? Why do these younger people feel the need to change that to "background nature shows from YT"? (and in so doing helping out a trillion-dollars behemoth).
I love this. Yes, as mentioned by others, maintenance might be an issue, but that should not be the reason to abandon the whole effort of connecting elderly people to async TV and simple home automation. I am sure there are more than enough children or relatives that are happy to assist with these maintenance tasks. The author seems to have done similar projects for a lot of his peers and it seems to work for them.<p>And... it's also a great reminder of how challanging it is for elderly folks (AND ourselves in the future!) to deal with the horror of multiple remotes and tech they don't understand.<p>In the "Why Use this Website?" section on the frontpage of his site, it reads: "Get help developing products and services that older adults actually want and need."<p>I applaud the mission and the effort to document all of it in a guide-like fashion. Great job!
Isn’t it weird there isn’t a hardware company that has a brand promise of “ease of use” vs “features”? There has to be a reasonably sized market share that prefers ease over advancements.
> Too Many Remotes<p>Two remotes was the moment I stopped watching TV altogether at third of her age.<p>Am I pointing the right device? Is the battery in any of them out? Is the bloody device not reacting of just waking up? The cable box is connected to the TV aux or it's a "smart" one connected to one of the HDMI aux'es? All this mess to watch mostly ads.
Well, this just goes to show not all elderly are the same. My relatives would love more remotes and hate more strange non physical interfaces. Controlling lights with voice commands vs a (eventually on a remote) button, button wins 100% of the time.<p>The biggest hurdle seems to be discoverability. A physical remote makes sense, and doesn't change. Buttons have a singular function and context doesn't matter. Apps are different beasts, navigate up/down/forward/backward (thus context (what did you do before, now doing x does y, but otherwise z)) is just met with glazy eyes. Going back and front just makes no sense, why sometimes you need to go to a menu and other times it's a shortcut button, makes no sense, especially when summoning the menu needs special navigation. To add insult to injury, every now and then apps get an overhaul, and suddenly navigation and buttons changed/looked different.<p>Now when i say apps, i do mean apps on phones/tvs. The windows UI works for them because the basics are the same for all programs, using word or outlook, menu items have text like "send" "save" and while it takes time, functionality is discoverable. But for tv apps the logic is "click up or down until the icon you want has a different hue, then press a button on the remote to do stuff, but only when the screen shows x,not when it shows z". It's too much functionality condensed in too little UI. I'm constantly baffled by design choices for apps that are supposed to be used by everyone, I'm sure it looks nice to designers and devs, but have they even tried showing their brand new TV interface (these are the worst offenders) to an elderly and gave them simple tasks?
In my experience, modern entertainment takes too much cognitive load to get up and running. With streaming/on demand, I have to make pointed decisions on what show I'm watching. I don't always want to make a decision right now of what to watch, I just want to watch something that's good enough or fits a certain theme. TV Channel creation programs, like DizqueTV[0] or ErsatzTV[1] have taken the load off, or at least lets me do that cognitive work in advance when making the channels.<p>You still need some way to get input to swap between these digital channels (I use Plex to surface my shows and schedule), but if you have existing local content it really feels like the "old" way of doing TV. You can even add commercials between episodes if you wanted!<p>I'm not sure if I'd call this foolproof for a 94-year-old, especially since sometimes the software needs to restart, but it's a step above modern streaming IMO.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/vexorian/dizquetv">https://github.com/vexorian/dizquetv</a>
[1] <a href="https://github.com/ErsatzTV/ErsatzTV">https://github.com/ErsatzTV/ErsatzTV</a>
This is adjacent to a project I'm currently working on that makes TV more useful for grandparents and elderly parents. It's a shame that in an era when you can't buy a non-smart TV, the market hasn't delivered much in terms of accessibility features for people who struggle navigating menus and apps.<p>If this sounds like something you want then please register your interest on this form.<p><a href="https://form.jotform.com/232982350527156" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://form.jotform.com/232982350527156</a>
I like that the author augmented a familiar product instead of adding additional gadgets.<p>I already notice a lot of difficulties to learn how to use new technologies with much younger relatives than his aunt. I think practice in learning new things and intrinsic motivation to do so is key.<p>Starting early to build this learning routine with older relatives is something I'm trying to do.
I tried something similar for my elderly grandmother who's suffering with dementia. TV's the only thing that gives her joy these days but she struggles.<p>I wanted something like reminders and information to show on the screen next to the TV program and used a HDMI capture card along with a Raspberry Pi to essentially add an overlay to the screen but it was too finicky and the pi would often lock up (its nowhere near powerful enough).<p>Ideally it needs a passthrough system that can resize the source input down a bit to fit a scrolling banner at the bottom and a sidebar that family members can remotely push messages to, or have scheduled reminders with a voice over.<p>Common things we found needed reminders were things like remembering to drink, a reminder of someone coming round, reminders to go to bed, shower, clean your teeth, etc.<p>I dont think anything interactive would be a good idea in this situation. The worst thing you can do with dementia patients is introduce something new to learn so it would need to be as frictionless as possible.