Ask HN: Best Video Call Solution for Elderly

the mother of my gf has problems keeping devices loaded. mostly because she has alzheimer, but dont forget about that aspect.

also, how are you calling, is it always on, is the speaker loud enough and microphone good and lastly is her privacy not compromised?

a solution to easily start a video chat without user registration is whereby.com , but thats mostly good if you already have a remote device, but no control over it.

elderly people are not stupid, they have different experiences and interests. if they want to learn how to use a device, they are likely able to do so.

When people make suggestions for this they underestimate how complicated their suggestion can be from a UX perspective.

Sometimes your user is someone who can't text, longs for the days when a telephone rang and the UX was to simply grip the receiver and put it to their ear.

Even a traditional tablet can be a pain because the user has to spend time finding the wake button when it's sometimes styled identically to the volume buttons. And they can't rely on location for memory as the tablet can be oriented different ways.

"Ohh that's not a real problem" you think.

Well, maybe not to you, but what if your eyesight is fading and you have arthritis in your hands? Then, even a touchscreen is a pain, I've watched folks use them where every tap happens three times to get it to "register"

I think an appropriate video device for OP's gran needs to have physical buttons (and not many of them aside from up/down answer(ring)/hangup, and have only one screen orientation.

Even when someone makes such devices they can't help but throw in the kitchen sink by letting it make phone calls as well. Great, now your UX is modal depending on whether you're making an audio or video call.

May be a little too underpowered actually.

There was a recent forum thread with users claiming the Pinebook Pro is somewhat usable with Jitsi Meet; and the Pinebook Pro has a more powerful CPU in it than the Pinebook which has the same chip as the Pinetab.

Maybe going with a refurbished Surface or similar would be a better option; talking to an elderly relative is an use case that hardly calls for open hardware.

I think Amazon Echo Show line has video call auto-answer with a time window to refuse, so once configured the remote side don’t have to be able to understand how to stop ringtone and start talking.

There’s no doubt that the cameras and drop in features are an invasion of his privacy. Unfortunately his dementia is advanced enough that we couldn’t ask him if this was ok before we put it in. His son has power of attorney over him (allows him to make legal decisions on his behalf) and as I am the only person who has access to these features and the intent is to help protect/care for him, we felt it was a fair trade off.

You can limit the people who can “drop in” on the device, so I guess you could let most friends and family use the call feature and save the drop in feature for certain trusted family members to use in an emergency.