vehicle/transportation technology-services

Older adults are clearly more tech proficient today… On the positive side, data sources show that older adults are more proficient today than in years past – why? Because of necessity.  Consider smartphones and enabling apps, software like FaceTime, social media tech, and TV remotes. It is nearly impossible to function at all without these skills.  They can be discovered through trial and error – or training can be found to help. These options include online, video, or live classes including GetSetup, Senior Planet, CyberSeniors, IBM SkillsBuild for Seniors, Senior Tech Connect and many more. But the more capable all become, the more new tech they encounter.

What was bad is worse – and the tech firms pay little attention. This Washington Post author advocates for the importance of technology caregiving -- helping aging parents with technology that is too difficult to navigate – like finding ‘Pay Bill’ button that moved or locating a discount coupon. Or forcing the elderly to use a QR code to read a concert program or study a restaurant menu. An airport Chili’s restaurant dropped paper menus a few years ago. Maybe they did it to save the planet. But many of the people who are in that airport are elderly – and they don’t know what’s for lunch until they train themselves to aim their cameras at the reprehensible and confusing QR code menu. Or they must plan ahead and read the online menu before they show up. Really?

The tech user experience for all ages is mostly depressing.  A few delighters here and there break up a constant struggle to produce the right command, find the right part of the right website, and overcome the insanity of bug-fixing updates after updates.  And that is if you are well-trained and proficient.  Whether it is a phone, a tablet, or a much-needed website, we curse and complain – and then there’s another software update and a new set of complaints. We struggle with appliance and car interfaces, trying to understand the rationale for buttons and screens that are cluttered with too much information. Stay tuned for the May, 2024 report about these user experiences and what can be done to improve them.   The April blogs:

The frustration of the user experience. February was short but busy – but a topic emerged on the last day of January that is beginning to take shape in the form of interviews and insights from others.  All agree that the user experience, whether it is a car, a microwave, Google Gemini or a smartphone is deteriorating, possibly due to nearly-endless but not necessarily useful ‘innovation’ from developers.  Whether it is the ‘cockpit’ of a car that may now have three screens, an authentication process on a website that requires another device, or an app that expects a password that has not been used in the past five years.  Here are the blog posts:

User experience non-design – it’s not just tech devices – consider the stove’s cockpit.’  Studying the screen plus button choices on a new Microwave, one wonders who tested this interface?  Did they really think that the combinations were self-explanatory and intuitive?   Or is the convention of poor design so inherent in microwave, oven, and washing machine interfaces, that a ‘cockpit’ design is expected (both by the vendor and the user).   Of course, a cockpit is an appropriate term – imagine a pilot sitting down in the left seat of an airplane with zero training on what to touch first.

You saw and considered the 2022 Tech Trends. Each of these changes will make a difference for older adults and those who serve them. Consider what’s happened with over the counter hearing aids, now available in kiosks at retailers like Walmart and Rite Aid. Note that falls can be detected in a home without a wearable – via a wall-mounted device or through in-home Wi-Fi.

In recent years, TV Remote control devices became more usable – except for Apple’s.  Rant on. Starting with the older one (“Ridiculously symmetrical and highly unusable”) to the most recent Siri remote – where they give up on usable buttons and enable changing the channel by voice. You gotta love a company with a device so devoid of buttons – and so easily off the rails with an accidental touch.  No wonder it makes more sense to talk to it. Meanwhile, many usable TV remote control devices are in the market, including an Apple TV button remote from Function101 and you can also get a button universal remote control – and even one that is back-lit – so you can see the buttons – crazy!  Why are these devices called senior remotes?  Duh, because they have buttons, which seniors, maybe tired of all the accidentally swiping and zooming they do with their smartphones, just seem comforting and accessible.