smartphones, cellphones

A simple WiFi phone for kids.  Three guys and an idea to make a simple phone for kids has blossomed into a national business – TinCan Kids.  Available in all 50 states and Canada, families can buy directly from the company for $100 in any of multiple colors, plugging into the home WiFi network. Unlike smartphones, even the Bark smartphone for kids with parental controls built in, the Tin Can is just a simple corded phone, vaguely similar to the look of the long-ago Princess phone. But the Tin Can has Preset phone numbers only, no Internet access, no spam calls, and described by the company as ideal for kids calling neighborhood kids. That was their idea, anyway.

 A blogger asserts, unquantified, unsupported by any numbers.  But it sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? You picture the unplugging and disconnecting of voice-enabled devices, user-run temperature and light controls.  Get these out of here! Then you say why? Or more to the point, what is the data that supports this?  An 2024 AARP report about growing utility and adoption of smart home technology?  Apparently ‘many retirees are now reconsidering whether devices are improving or creating new frustrations.’ Hard to argue that managing smart home tech to work on your behalf, well, takes work.  But take the devices out?

Some have said the concept of ‘AgeTech’ can be a bit depressing.  It is especially bleak when you look at the startup portfolio which aggregates a variety of tech categories to help older adults in their later years, Making Aging Easier for Everyone, and includes offerings that tackle deficits like issues with mobility, fall detection/prevention, caregiving, Alzheimer’s, vision, and many aspects of health. AgeTech tools include a few for the heavily-invested category of Digital Health ($3 Billion in Q1 2025).  All these products, all very useful, fill gaps in the general consumer market.  Consumer product designers tend not to start the day thinking about the older adult as a market segment. Instead, older adults are segmented into their roles -- older adults are the care recipients (B2B healthcare and senior living), as well as individuals with disabilities and needs for greater accessibility and/or services.  All useful.

Kudos to AARP - life expectancy impacts tech adoption. For the first time in their published research, AARP’s 2025 report provides insights into the tech adoption and preferences of older adults aged 80+. With life expectancy at 65 extending to an additional 20 years, this change reveals business opportunities to serve that age group, including tech-enabled services (like high speed Internet access), health-related devices and services, and most particularly training, as the survey reveals.  

Touch screens are an unending aggravation. Study the iPhone commands, for example.  Push up to get the display, pull down to select ‘Do not disturb’, but not too hard, because many other options appear. Push sideways, to change screens, move an icon around the screen, and, well, you know what happens then. Of course, knowing these choices is based on experience (and experimentation over time), not based on any training.  So what if you encounter the device for the first time?  Your hands shake just a bit, and you remember how much you liked having a keyboard…You wonder, are there ways to train new (and older) users on how to use touch screens – and for that matter, the essentials of the device? And will Siri’s voice commands overcome the touch screen’s limitations? Yes, actually.

AARP fielded a survey that is worth a look. The topic was health and wellness app usage by the 50+ population. The goal was to understand 50+ level of engagement with health and wellness apps – an online survey that included 694 individuals who owned smartphone or tablet.   Interestingly the 15-minutes survey also includes a response comparison with 40-49 year-olds, likely because that is AARP’s next-up target membership. Responders needed to be comfortable with downloading a health and wellness app -- and have interest in trying them. 

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.  

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:

The more technology changes, it’s a step back for some.  You probably think the inevitability of tech change is mostly positive. And in a macro sense, maybe it is. But for some older adults, it’s one negative experience after another. The closing of thousands of bank branches in favor of online banking, the elimination of paper social security statements, the near-elimination of paper savings bonds for the grandchildren, and the ubiquitous introduction of the QR code in restaurants – saving labor.

August, so warm, so replete with nursing home doomsayers and endless scam calls.  You may be one of the dwindling population (34% are homeowners) who have landlines in the US (even digital phone-service based). You may feel like it is a waste, especially given the remarkably robust phone-scam industry populated in noisy call centers by reps who know nothing about the so-called Do Not Call list, and whose measurement must be based on getting you to pick up the phone again and again.  Your relatives only text. Even your dentist and doctor prefer text. So why keep it? Maybe you run a business and need to call clients. Maybe you are legitimately afraid of not being found by emergency services (see below).  Maybe you are an older adult living alone and just want to chat with someone.  Here are the five blog posts from August: