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Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

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21–30 of 142 posts

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#21
post #10

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

I think normies (not hn reading outliers) in Gen Z and alpha may have regressed. Younger people come up in the era of devices and apps hiding the existence of a filesystem from you.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#22
Architect here. (the building kind.) "Aging in Place" and "Universal Design" are two of the most transformative, difficult, subtle, and important problems facing us today. Other countries are building social structures to address the systemic issues associated with aging.

But because of the nature of our healthcare and bureaucratic systems, we have a unique need for interventions in physical conditions - be it small-scale building modifications or assistive technologies. So, especially if you want to innovate making -stuff- I concur wholeheartedly.

That said - it looks like the comments until now on this are mostly looking at software-based assistive technologies. Which is ALSO a spot-freaking-on approach.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#23
post #10

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

I think so. My only data point though is probably my grandpa. He is nearing 80 and as far as interfacing with consumer tech devices, he is just as proficient as me. The only thing I beat him on is, well, I am a software engineer, so I know how do a little bit more with the guts. I attribute it to, he worked for 'the telephone company' (AT&T) most of his life as a technician and in sales. So he for him, keeping up and learning how to work with new devices is a no brainier for him. My guess is that those of us who are younger, it'll be the same as him.

I think its more about, stuff iterates today to your much more experienced and maybe open to adapting to new iterations faster. Or like my grandfather, he work with lots of new tech continuously over his 30-40 year career. So adapting to new tech is just second nature.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#24

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

There have been and are attempts at addressing the usability gap of tech by the more tech illiterate over the years. Particularly, Linux projects such as Ordissimo[1], Eldy[2], and Endless OS[3]. I am sure there are plenty of other projects, as well (including Apple's new iPhone Assistive Access mode[4]. As sad as it may be, the market would probably be non-existent in a decade or two as newer generations enter aged care having already been somewhat familiar with computers and phone technology.

[1] https://www.ordissimo.com/en/why-ordissimo

[2] http://www.eldy.eu/

[3] https://www.endlessos.org/

[4] https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#25
post #9

> or wiping his butt Slightly weird take: bidets have this field fully covered and the only thing stopping them from being widely used (especially in this domain!) is user resistance to an unfamiliar solution to a very personal problem. We don't need new tech for this, we just need a marketing breakthrough.

Having worked in high end residential, I can tell ya the LAST person who's going to want to use a bidet is ironically also the hypothetical "grandpa" who's not rich enough to hire someone to wipe his a$$.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#26
I think this is some already being looked at in some aging societies. Look at Japan and even China where they have a lack of nursing personnel. They are looking at the humanoid robot hype with a keen eye for supporting people in the future. And there are likely many other research being done with emphasis on these societies that could show us problems that need solutions.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#27
post #9

> or wiping his butt Slightly weird take: bidets have this field fully covered and the only thing stopping them from being widely used (especially in this domain!) is user resistance to an unfamiliar solution to a very personal problem. We don't need new tech for this, we just need a marketing breakthrough.

User resistance only gets harder with older people. They will be set in their ways.

Yep, and that resistance will kill almost all attempts to design tech like this. Anyone who is interested in this space needs to look at what Kimberly-Clark did to make Depends a (more or less) accepted part of aging.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#29
post #9

> or wiping his butt Slightly weird take: bidets have this field fully covered and the only thing stopping them from being widely used (especially in this domain!) is user resistance to an unfamiliar solution to a very personal problem. We don't need new tech for this, we just need a marketing breakthrough.

You might be wiping their butt because they are wearing adult diapers, not because they can go on the toilet but not wipe.

Re: Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

#30

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Indeed, I saw some simplified computers over time but everything "behind" them got crazy complex. I did tech for a living and it's still infuriating at times.

Ex got passwords altered. My credit union got ransomwared. For mysterious reasons the "bank by touchtone" worked so I could pay my credit card, but I can't get balances and access via web or app. The point being that problems are wildly varied and changing, let alone basic stuff that Apple and others change every so often. I know how to get answers by web search, but it's tricky, and impossible for others. Worse, fraudulent sites get top SEO rank, pose as authorized support and get you to drop RAC apps on your device. First question she had was "What is this remote app?" Like, delete immediately and restart the phone. Apple does not ask you to do that.

So, I think that personal attention is often needed. To the extent that AI can replace some of the tedious lookup, fine.

Another thing I have noted over time is that in helping people, I often run through lots of menu items and settings that people are unaware of (and sometimes I am not aware of) and the same function doable in two different places.

Of course, they want me to explain what I did, but since a lot was just looking for trouble and finding settings, it's 10x faster just to do it than explain it, especially since the solution is likely one-shot or useful once every 3 years. And then everything changes.

Well, I'll stop here for now. I love that this matter is getting a thread here.

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