Commentary

The Seven Ages Of Apps

When my kids were kids, we bought them educational software for birthdays and Christmas.  We wanted them to be computer-literate, so they had AOL with Parental Controls and CD-based educational software.  O.K, a few games that I wanted to play slipped in there, too. 

Approximately three years separated each child.  The industry understood that different age groups had different aptitudes and capabilities, so software for kids was rated Pre-K, Kindergarten, Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5, etc. You could basically tell what age group was being targeted. Like Fisher-Price toys, the big buttons, bright colors and outsized letters in the user interface were giveaways. 

After a certain age the ratings begin to speak to sex and violence, not intellectual capacity and technical facility.  As you leave childhood behind, websites, apps, and devices shift into one-size-fits-all.   And the one size is subject to continual “improvement” in functionality and design to capture the short attention span of our consumer culture, obsessed with perpetual post-adolescence. Having the latest (thinnest) version of anything makes us feel young. 

But beware.  As much as we would like to deny it (and as those in the “Sandwich Generation” are coming to appreciate) Shakespeare warns us there are seven ages to man, not five.  The last two begin to mirror a return to the first two. 

 “The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness.

The Baby Boomers are aging. Their parents are already aged. Those in the sixth and particularly the seventh age are experiencing diminished faculties of sight, sound and touch. They are one of the fastest-growing demographics in the country and they have money -- more money than the 20something living in the basement.  However, we still design almost all digital products for the 20something.  

The tablet would seem to be the perfect solution for an octogenarian.   But wait.  As circulation and dexterity wane in the fingers and the skin becomes more brittle, older folks scratch away like chickens trying to tap a hyperlink of ever-diminishing size.  Their eyes strain to find “Logout” buried somewhere in an itty-bitty drop-down box. They call their children for support -- and their children would gladly pay a premium for apps designed specifically for their elders that offered the basic core functions of email, Skype, simple word processing, reading/watching the news, music and online video with the big buttons, bright colors and outsized letters that they can manage (without a support call).

We can design software specifically for the first two ages of man, but we seem reluctant to design software for the last two.

There are a few dedicated “devices” out there, and a handful of standalone apps, but what is really needed are APIs for the services that we all use, that run on the devices we all use, to “Appify” the elderly to interact (albeit on a more limited basis) with everyone else, not just those who share the same specialized “Elder App” or “Computer Crutch.” Just as there is a big gap between what one age group can handle compared to the next in children, graded levels of apps will be required for the aging:  Stages 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, etc., to ease their exit from the stage.

This will be especially true as TV continues the migration from its original and relatively simple broadcast model  to an ever-more-complex, IP-driven, cross-platform, time-shifted, start-here-stop-there, own-rent-stream video navigation proposition.  We present all of the above as increasing the “convenience” of television viewing -- but for a certain demographic that consumes an enormous amount of television, the convenience proposition is specious. Just because someone grew up with and was once the master of all computers, devices and operating systems it does not mean they will be A) able and B) interested in keeping up with an increasingly rapid “versioning” of television by their 91st year.  Like the perpetual post-adolescents that we are, we like to believe that we will maintain and display the same mental and physical prowess we currently possess until we are delivered by that promised point of singularity lying just beyond the horizon. Forever arrested in the third-fifth ages of man.

The elderly should be able to enjoy the advances of modern TV technology with dignity.  They invented TV.  But we don’t make it easy.  Don’t they know apps are for kids?
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