Related News Articles

05/01/2025

Currently, about 65% of US elders are cared for by their families at home. For 13% of those who aren’t living with family, the gap is partially filled by assisted living establishments.

04/16/2025

It’s a common refrain in senior living that today’s assisted living communities are closer to yesterday’s skilled nursing facilities.

04/01/2025

26 of the 48 state Medicaid agencies studied could not report the number of “critical incidents” — such as abuse, neglect or exploitation.

03/16/2025

Goal: meaningful connections, sharing caregiving responsibilities, and developing community-based solutions.

You are here

computers, broadband, and social networking

Title: 

computers, broadband, and social networking

Students Teach Seniors About Telehealth, Digital Banking, and Online Safety

03/20/2025

SAN JOSE, CA—March 19, 2025—Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) announced that Beacon Broadbandopens in a new tab, a subsidiary of Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative, has launched a six-week digital literacy class in Oregon to help senior citizens learn to navigate the internet securely, enhancing their lives. The class pairs seniors with high-school student volunteers as instructors, covering topics like telehealth, digital banking services, and cybersecurity.

Nextdoor and the 2024 hurricanes

It’s that awful time – the hurricane season. The time when the national hurricane center forecasts, repeated ad nauseum, are destined to frighten everyone, no matter how far from affected regions. The same broadcast can dwell on cones and paths, shout at those in beach areas that the evacuation instructions are meant for them – “IF YOU STAY, YOU WILL DIE!” Mapping the cone of the hurricane and talking constantly about evacuation sounds like a plan – but some observe that the distance required to evacuate to safety could be long – and thus talking about availability of shelters makes more sense. So residents who will 'shelter in place' stock up before stores begin closing, and gas stations run out of gas . Then they watch the 24-hour source of all fear – cable news, looking for guidance from Jim Cantore, that icon among storm trackers.

Living your best life -- bring on the suites. Blogs from June 2024

Don’t we already have technology to live our best life as we age?  Absolutely, as predicted in 2011, needs have been fulfilled, tech innovation has made it so. But do older adults know about it?  Could they afford it?  Could they deploy it in their homes? Will it enable them to age in place?  Do investors view the ‘best life’ suite of capabilities as an opportunity worthy of funding? The process of pitching one product at a time is well established – and innovators are comfortable with it, as are their judges.  But is that what older adults need?  Or would a suite of offerings, with deployment before the need becomes urgent, make more sense?  Here are the four blog posts from June, 2024:

2011's AARP prediction for older adults: technology to live your best life

An old report, the core concept of Connected Living was excellent and predictive.  Thirteen years ago, AARP sponsored research that posed questions about technology’s future role in connecting older adults with families, resources and each other. With input from 30 industry experts, the research attempted to determine how technology could better serve older adults moving forward. The result was a 2011 report called Connected Living for Social Aging: Designing Technology for All. You won’t find it on AARP’s website – it’s too old.  But it is very interesting, especially given that year's low technology adoption and extremely limited use among older adults compared to today. The report accurately predicted the major role technology would take in their lives as they aged, though experts were not exactly sure how.

Press Release: New report, The User Experience Needs an Upgrade

06/13/2024

Baby boomers and beyond increasingly depend on technology -- but using it has become a chore of fragmentation across devices and websites.

As the pace of inevitable tech change collides with an aging demographic, firms will need to seek user input, especially in healthcare. Accessibility features will become standard technology features.”

— Laurie Orlov

Our future tech interactions mandate personalized user experiences

The mindset of ‘get the product out the door’ sets the stage for poor user experience. For market researchers, there are many data-driven ways to gauge consumer preferences today, and tech companies can chose among surveys, interviews, focus groups and customer observation. Product life cycles in newer tech categories are shrinking, with consumers willing to replace devices that still work with newer models, hence the apparent ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ tech cycle. In the future, we will need a new paradigm for tech user experience that can span our multiple interactions, driven by an opt-in profile about preferences and personal characteristics that can better shape interactions.  We will expect that our profile will drive technology access. Today’s fragmented tech experience offers behaviors based on a disconnected set of profiles – a Starbucks profile knows what coffee I like, a Gmail profile knows about my Inbox preferences, and Marriott knows what kind of room or bed is preferred. In the future and with the assistance of conversational AI, the user should be able to override those and specify a profile that spans all tech interactions, acting as a complexity-hiding agent on the user’s behalf.  

For big tech, "Ready, Fire, Aim" design approaches are user-hostile

What happens when engineers believe that no matter what, the customers will buy? Rant on. Look at the forum discussions of problems after Apple’s release in November, or consider Google’s Gemini self-humiliation.  Will users turn in their iPhones in disgust? Stop using Gmail in protest? What about the Tesla that is so cool it does not have to identify clearly how to open the door, or put the car into drive or reverse? Was the car returned? Will customers return a device they don’t understand? Consider Windows 11 updates are tormenting users, again per Microsoft’s own forum. Will people give up using the PC? Not likely. 

Did you miss one? March blogs lament deteriorating user experience

The decline of design.  As interviews proceed for the upcoming report, The Future of the Tech User Experience, all agree.  The deteriorating user experience, aka UX, is the result of fragmentation across multiple devices, portals, and websites. Product development has superseded UX. The pre-development focus group has been largely abandoned in favor of a post release shock-and-awe experience both for developers (bad PR) and customers (just plain bad).  And it is not just tech – consider the impenetrable smart TV interface, the microwave button-display combination, the new car that lacks readable warning lights and other user interface issues.  Here are the blog posts from March:

The tech user experience today – the customer does not matter 

Has the  tech user experience substantially improved?  For years device and software tech ‘improved’ to a point of widespread optimism about our tech future. Certainly access has improved: Ninety-five percent of Americans use the Internet and more than 80% have broadband at home. Today there are numerous programs to subsidize access, and   smartphone penetration has exceeded 92%.  One would believe this ubiquity of access might make us hopeful that we are now in the era of tech helping consumers of all ages, no matter what task or level of knowledge.  

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - computers, broadband, and social networking

Categories