Tablet for the elderly. Part two

    In a previous post, I wrote about the problem of using older digital devices by older people. Habr's interested reaction dispelled recent doubts that this is indeed a general problem, and not my idée fixe, which arose on the basis of private observations.

    In the comments of the Khabrovsk residents to the first post, several products focused on the use of older people were mentioned. Yes, similar products exist, but none of them solves the problem. We are also working on the implementation of such an application and, in my opinion, have moved beyond the existing analogues.

    And now, in order. Let's start by taking a close look at the existing solutions. What does the modern IT industry offer older people? To date, several attempts have been made to facilitate interaction with computers for older people and people with disabilities. First of all, we should mention the leading manufacturers of mass operating systems: Microsoft, Apple and Google. They all went the same way: they made it possible to more or less adjust the interface, leaving the basic principles of data organization and management unshakable.The applicability of this approach is very limited: it will make life easier only for those people who cannot use the computer in a standard way due to some physical restriction (they see worse, they hear worse, they can’t cope with the “mouse”). For older people, one of the main problems, as I mentioned in the previous article, is the study and development of information organization principles and device management principles . For modern active people, familiarization with these principles does not cause any difficulties, but people who have heard about all this a little or did not hear at all, at every step encounter difficulties in mastering the new, and with very high probability these difficulties become insoluble for them.

    The same approach of “making the buttons bigger and the sound louder” is also characteristic of very few (and, by the way, not very popular) specialized computers and applications for the elderly: Lexibook Tablet Serenity Ultra , Telikin , Biglauncher , in-Touch , WOW! Computer products , Tapestry , etc. Their designers and manufacturers also focus on primitivizing the interface while maintaining the basic logic of operating systems.

    Such half measures, which out of age changes only partially take into account somatic ones, but absolutely do not take mental and psychological changes into account, are extremely ineffective.

    You can draw an analogy with a car:if the driver is a very elderly person, then his behavior in heavy traffic will be poorly predicted even though this elderly person has good glasses and a hearing aid. This is a well-known problem, underlying, for example, the “Gray Dawn” series of the 7th season of the “South Park” series, and to solve which some countries are developing special vehicles for the elderly, for example, Ropits in Japan or iOn in England.

    Cars for the elderly are a necessary thing, but there are much more applications of IT in everyday life, and the old person who can no longer drive even the most advanced cars will be interested in a variety of digitally stored information for a long time: photos, books, music , movies, etc.

    Obviously, in the IT sector, there is a need to create such an inexpensive hardware and software device that will provide older people and people with disabilities access to multimedia information, taking into account the following features of the target audience:
    • difficulties in learning new things, especially if it is the new lies outside the usual sphere of interests of a given person;
    • lack of self-confidence and weak psychological stability;
    • low vision;
    • weak hearing;
    • limited movement of the hands and fingers due to diseases or injuries of the joints;
    • poor fine motor skills of the arm muscles;
    • possible inaction of one of the hands (consequences of injury, injury or stroke).

    Realizing this, we decided to make such a device and were actively engaged in the design and development of a prototype.

    We have designed a software and hardware solution that provides people with disabilities access to digital information in a natural, intuitive way, taking into account, in particular, possible limitations of hearing, vision, memory and movements. At the current stage, we were working on an application for a standard Android tablet, which is designed to simplify the use of digital information for older people, so for definiteness in the future we will call our solution “Tablet for the elderly” (PP).

    The presentation of information in the software, as well as the logic of its search and access to it, are based on metaphors of familiar objects (books, records, magazines, photographs, etc.) and actions with them. Thus, for the user, the logic of working with digital content becomes as simple and close to the usual logic of working with similar non-digital information. It is appropriate to mention here that most recently Apple announced the rejection of skeuomorphism in iOS7. So, in the fight against unjustified naturalization of the interface, a child was splashed out with water. If you recall that Microsoft ended skeuomorphism even earlier than Apple, when switching to Windows 8, it becomes clear that older people have less and less chances to master computer technology and actively use it.

    We insist on maintaining a reasonable level of similarity between IT objects and their material prototypes - this is one of the components of realizing IT metaphors for the elderly. The metaphors of familiar objects and actions with these objects implemented in the program are supplemented by metaphors of managerial influences on the program. An important decision implemented in the software is to refuse to present the data in the form of a tree-like structure familiar to computer users and to just as familiarly present a sequence of control actions as paths in a graph.

    In PP, we completely refused to enter data using the keyboard.

    Considering that quite often an elderly person or a disabled person can click on something in one way or another by accident (made a mistake, distracted, pressed the wrong button), the PC is designed in such a way as to protect the person from getting into an unexpected situation for him, which can cause serious discomfort and even panic.

    Now about the implementation. We planned to make a beautiful pre-sale version of the software on our own, but not everything turned out as planned, and now we realized that we ourselves can’t cope with the task.

    After studying the problem and analyzing the solutions, we prepared the terms of reference for the first version of the software. Then they made a prototype, but it became obvious that it is not valuable without the right design. We turned to several UI designers who offered beautiful designs, but not one of them got a design that meets the needs and previous experience of an elderly person. Now we understand that we need a good UX designer, which we have not yet been able to find.

    In addition, there was an understanding that a gerontopsychologist should work together with a UX designer. In our TK, we tried as much as possible to avoid everything that could push awayelderly person from the use of PP. A gerontopsychologist will help polish our solutions, and together with the UX-designer they will propose such changes in the specification so that the software not only does not repel, but becomes attractive to older users.

    We began negotiations with one of the Russian electronics manufacturers on the design of the technical part of a special tablet for the elderly (we are talking mainly about technical design).

    The most important thing in this project is the concepts laid down in it and a beautiful implementation. The concepts are worked out and fixed in the ToR. There remain two needs that we cannot realize on our own. In order to “make candy” from the existing developments, or, in other words, bring the PP to the replicated sample, we now need to:
    1. To attract narrow specialists (UX-designer and gerontopsychologist).
    2. Attract external financing.

    We are working on this ourselves, but I will be grateful to the Habrasociety for help: specific ideas, suggestions and contacts that may be useful.

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