I have been working on a web app that makes tutorials for elderly people who struggle with technology. Something as simple as "turn off the wifi and turn on data" can be a struggle for a lot of people.
My plan is to make tools for making tutorials customized exactly to the users phone / desktop screen. So if an icon is on bottom right, the tutorial should mirror the same.
I have sporadically worked on it for the few months. The only issue is whether I am dumbing down the app way too much.
My experience of building accessible systems for low-literacy user groups is there's pretty much no such thing as dumbing down too much.
But the one big lesson is user test, user test and user test again. People will get tripped up by all sorts of stuff you can't see coming.
The good news is it sounds like your app could be mocked-up cheaply to get it infront of people to test your hypothesis before you've spent too much time building stuff.
There are umpteen agencies around that can help with research like this, including finding appropriate cohorts of people and even doing the user testing on your behalf. It sounds like it would be well worth the money.
Yes and: I would've loved a "parental controls" for eldercare. Config and arrange the entire UX. Mostly to remove stuff, highly constrain the UX. I'd be fine with a shell. Like the olden days, when we used AUTOEXEC.BAT to launch AutoMenu or Norton Commander on startup.
While the constainly evolving UI/UX of iOS is probably a good thing, each new iteration completely defeats my elders. They're simply past the point of learning new things.
For a device that champions a non-modal paradigm, the iOS UI maze has a lot dead-ends.
They should also do usability testing of Siri with elders. Something as simple as a "start over" would be great.
