Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly

I've had a rough time with GrandPad. Tried to set it up for a family to use during covid, the mother is in her 60s and pretty competent with tech - they use iPads, Kindles etc just fine. We tried to change the registration of the GrandPad from her billing and they said they needed to ship us a whole new device. Then they said they could just ship a new sim. So anyway she's gotten the new sim in the mail and has had such a frustrating time with it & can't get it to do video calls. She's wanting me to take it back.

The whole idea was that it would be simple enough that her son with Down Syndrome could use it to keep in touch with friends. He's smart, he can use gmail, but he can't use this thing.

Honestly my perspective on them has been that it's a cheap thing, UX is a real mixed bag, customer service not great, & I deeply regret losing the time we've spent trying to work with it vs exploring other solutions. Ugh. I even don't want to go pick it up to try and deal with it from my side.

Glad you have had a better experience, but let's just say it's not universal!

I don't think it's necessarily fair to assume she "needs" that without further context.

My parents (late 70s; mother has severe arthritis) have an iPad that they use for video calling and they have been able to pick it up without issues. The only other thing they use it for is looking at photos we share to them on Google Photos.

They were actually fairly tech illiterate (if anything weird happened to the TV or VCR they would phone me), but maybe 5 years ago I setup a Linux PC for my father to send emails to relatives. I should note that this was the first time he ever used a computer or anything remotely technical (his career was as a carpenter). I expected him to get frustrated and never use it again after the first few times, but he has learnt and managed to pick it up fairly well.

I agree some things did take a while (e.g. explaining right clicking), but he persisted which was the main thing. The first few video calls usually resulted in me not seeing anything as they held their fingers over the camera, but they learnt how to do it. He has even started an online shop buying and selling Lego pieces (much to the detriment of my mother, as she barely sees him now).

Hi. I am actually working on a solution for this. My grandma has a bit of dementia combined with hearing loss and a language barrier. This led me a solution of a remotely managed box with video camera hooked up to a TV. I'd love to chat with you and get to know your use case more. Feel free to e-mail me.

Video chat and elderly relatives was a pain point in my life for a few years. I spent quite a lot of time finding a solution (spoiler: it's FaceTime and 4G iPads).

Things I tried:

- Initially, I tried Skype on a Windows laptop (around 2011). This was a nightmare for everyone. There were too many points of failure (wifi would disconnect and require a support phone call, Windows would update and require a phonecall to log back in, Skype would require an update and trigger a support call, etc).

- Around 2013, I tried an Android tablet with the Skype App over wifi. This was just as bad as a laptop (the app was also pretty unstable.

- I switched to Google Hangouts. The UI was an issue and was also unstable.

- In 2014/2015, I gifted an old Macbook Air. I set this up with Facetime and also Skype. My relatives preferred Skype initially (since they had experience with the app), but I showed them how to make and answer FaceTime calls over a Christmas weekend and they picked it up in less than an hour. The MacBook setup was great, but it died in 2016.

- In 2016, I gifted them an iPad with 4G. We continued communicating with FaceTime (and iMessage). This has been flawless for the past 4 years. I update the iPad each year over Christmas. I've only had one support call to install Snapchat (so my grandparents can keep in contact with a great-grandchild).

If the iPad dies anytime soon, I would consider Facebook Portal as an alternative.

I have helped both my mother and some elderly folks with their computers and have a few observations which may be of some help.

1) UI changes really bother them. A lot of that crew works on muscle memory -- an icon moves and they get lost. They don't easily re-parse a new UI for changes.

2) Click speed decreases, so double-clicks are much harder. A single deliberate click is fine, but the doubles seem to pose problems.

3) The iPad doesn't seem to work for some. When I found there was no easy cheat sheet available (the ones I found seemed either insufficient or were focused on trivia/new-hotness), I made a series of laminated sheets. One described the various screens, one pointed out the parts of an iPad (controls, mostly). The third showed the different "gestures" (the important ones, anyway). This just ... didn't take. She doesn't care for it. Possibly due to #1 -- I am considering getting a laptop and using Classic Shell to fake that it is XP just so she feels comfortable again.

4) Visual acuity varies widely but you're probably on top of that.

5) Plugging things in can be problematic, so some kind of easy docking station or wireless charging might be better if available.

I have been watching this post with interest.