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I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

by kcsaba2 on 12/5/24, 7:24 PM with 96 comments

• by pinum on 12/5/24, 10:58 PM

  This looks like it could be very valuable for quite a lot of people- thank you for making it!

  Just a couple first impressions from your site... loading it on a phone, the first thing I see is this: https://imgur.com/4maP1vV

  (1) The entire contents of the site is completely covered by a cookie warning. This is honestly quite annoying even for an SWE like me, never mind your target audience.

  I know at least one older person who doesn't understand these cookie modals at all and refuses to touch them. They either continue using the site in the background without accepting/rejecting(!), or if that's not possible they just leave the site.

  I'd suggest you carefully check whether you actually need this modal at all. If the only cookies you use are technically necessary, then (based on my layman understanding of the law) you don't need to show it. If you absolutely must use tracking cookies, then maybe consider a more subtle approach that allows the user to continue reading the page without deciding.

  (2) "Join Now" makes it sound like I'm signing up to a subscription, rather than making a one-off payment.

• by PopAlongKid on 12/6/24, 2:39 PM

  >Our parents and elderly relatives didn't grow up with smartphones.

  Neither did about half of the millennials, so why don't they need similar help?

  I don't think the qualifier is age, rather it is prior computer experience. I am elderly, and only started using a smartphone (as opposed to feature phone) about four years ago, but I have had my hands on computer keyboards for over 50 years, so learning to use all the basic features of a smartphone didn't require any help.

  Likewise, many millennials did grow up using computers. If you already understand basics on a PC like bootup, shutdown, login, system settings, installing a program, starting a program, finding a program, copy/paste, upload/download, the smartphone should not present much of a challenge. Otherwise, learning a smartphone is mostly just learning how to use a computer.

• by quasse on 12/5/24, 9:17 PM

  Did you test your course on any elderly people as you were developing it? What did you learn from that, if so? Did it require changes that were surprising?

• by qwertox on 12/6/24, 6:55 AM

  I just watched the power phone on / off preview, and it has the issues which I assumed it would have.

  Long-press to turn on a powered-off phone is not a standard. Even I don't know how to turn these devices on, so I do a combination of multiple short presses, multiple long presses until it works.

  Powering the phone off via the button won't work on modern phones, since the hardware power button has become the tool to invoke an assistant. You need to swipe down the notifications twice and use the software power button from there.

  In this room I have 6 Android devices from different manufacturers.

  Then there are so many OS differences between all the vendors, that it becomes almost impossible to teach someone who doesn't know how Android generally works if it isn't on their own device.

  But I congratulate him for doing these videos and hope that the elderly manage to learn from the course.

• by VyseofArcadia on 12/6/24, 1:54 PM

  What I have discovered about teaching[0] is that some people just don't want to learn the fundamental interaction principles. They just don't. They have a small list of specific things they want to do, and they would rather memorize those specific workflows than something that generalizes. Of course they'll have to learn it all from scratch again when Google decides to change the gmail UI for the gazillionth time, but that's a problem for the future.

  I'm curious how much feedback you'll get of the form, "don't teach me all this stuff, just teach me how to look at photos of my grandkids".

  [0] and not just the elderly, although I feel the elderly are worse about this in general

• by kcsaba2 on 12/5/24, 7:24 PM

  Teaching tech to elderly people is hard—many struggle with gestures, apps, or even turning their phones on. I built a course from scratch, covering every step from unboxing to apps. Along the way, I learned about video production, Android’s quirks, and marketing struggles.

• by bloomingeek on 12/6/24, 12:16 AM

  As a now retired guy who grew up loving to question almost everything, it was easy for me to get into electronics when I was able to. (I was a little late, not until my mid thirties.) I especially love reading manuals from the things I purchased.

  However, I noticed that a lot of people my age didn't share my interest in this area. I helped as often as they would let me, but to a man, they just weren't willing to take the time to get interested. They just wanted their stuff to work. They also had no idea of all the features their products were capable of performing. (Cellphone anyone?)

  I've often wondered if it was the way I was 'wired' or if I just had the urge to know these things. Well done on the project!

• by RankingMember on 12/5/24, 9:09 PM

  I love how exhaustive your approach to documentation is here, because (like you said) it really does need to be to be truly useful. If the user doesn't know how to get to "Contacts", saying "Start by opening Contacts" does them no good and just discourages them.

• by kulshan on 12/5/24, 11:07 PM

  I manage a Digital Literacy Program for seniors. This is a great idea. But for example, most seniors I work with are total beginners. Simply getting to signing up for an udemy course and figuring out player controls on this course are pretty big obstacles.

  The long running "Easy Tablet Help for Seniors" is much simpler and free.

  Sorry! Don't want to discourage your work though!

• by Perenti on 12/6/24, 6:06 AM

  I'm quite ignorant about my phone. I struggle to send someone a photo with it. Every time I have to interact with android for anything trickier than making a phone call or sending a text I just end up angry and frustrated.

  I don't use apps on my phone except for phone calls and texts, mostly because I have no clues whatsoever.

  I'm probably in your target audience, but:

  1) Too expensive for something I'm not convinced will improve my life (it seems to me that people who know how to use smartphones spend 90%+ of their free time looking at it, rather than interacting with real live people), which leads to

  2) How will learning this make my life better?

• by iamben on 12/5/24, 11:29 PM

  Hey this is great - just had a look for my mum! Couple of questions (which without watching are hard to answer) - why the modules on the F-Droid App Store and Firefox? As a (young(er!)) Android user I've used neither and would be unlikely to. I can't imagine my mum would use anything other than Play and Chrome, so it feels a little 'too far' for me, confusion for the sake of it?

  Also a suggestion - pretty much everyone uses WhatsApp in the UK, mostly everyone I know will be in a WhatsApp group with their parents (and/or grandparents!). Definitely worth adding that as a module!

• by teaearlgraycold on 12/6/24, 1:43 AM

  I have to wonder if the Anglo-sphere elderly will struggle with your accent. It’s not too strong and I can understand, but for those that may be slightly hard if hearing and have less neuroplasticity maybe it would be an extra hurdle to using the guide.

• by dmje on 12/6/24, 8:23 AM

  Looks like a great course.

  I’m sorry to say my experience has been “Android = pain” as far as the oldies are concerned. Had years supporting MiL and her endless devices. Then two years ago we got her an iPad instead. Support requirement has dropped to pretty much nil.

• by ericra on 12/5/24, 11:08 PM

  I genuinely think this is a great thing to offer and very much needed. Great work. Your ffmpeg tutorial also looks really interesting, and I'll definitely be checking that out when I have time.

  But please consider removing or changing that huge cookie banner on the main page. The amount of people that will simply choose to not interact with the site at all and X out immediately when seeing this might be higher than you think. That would be my first instinct.

• by zoomTo125 on 12/6/24, 1:32 AM

  The most common problem I encounter is that signing into their email accounts. Google somehow decided to send prompt to the phone even though nothing has changed (same password, IP, computer, browser with cookies). And, my parents have no idea how to find the relevant notification and find the prompt. And, I even take some time because there're like a thousand notifications on their phones.

• by ChrisArchitect on 12/5/24, 9:57 PM

  To clarify: this is how to use the phone, the Android OS. Not develop for Android.

• by evanjrowley on 12/5/24, 9:55 PM

  This is fantastic. I can think of a handful of people who I'd recommend this course for.

  I have a question about something I noticed in "Preview of 03.07. Finding & launching apps" - In this lesson, what you refer to as the "desktop" is something I typically refer to as "home screen" - Is "desktop" really the preferred way to describe that screen?

• by simlan on 12/5/24, 9:33 PM

  Awesome. I recently had similar thoughts and then I was considering all the variations in the android eco system. Lots of times when I am helping I have to just rely ony intuition because I am not familiar with the specific flavour of android used by Samsung or whatever else sonone might have.

  I will have a look at your material. Maybe I can localize it to my needs.

• by qilo on 12/6/24, 1:13 AM

  Is there any course about Android "administration"? I mean there are plenty of content on Linux/Windows administration (not programming): partitions, file systems, bootloaders, boot sequence, kernels, init(ialization), processes, shells, users, configuration, application installation and execution, logging, security, etc. How all of the components fit together, what interacts with what, and so on.

  When I first got my phone was looking for an Android course which would explain all the above concepts (and more, like what is launcher, how notifications work, what other APIs there are, location, camera, microphone, etc.). But didn't find anything, only found courses/books about application development in Java/Kotlin. I have no interest in Android programming, just want to know how it works.

• by kytazo on 12/7/24, 2:11 AM

  Hey, I've been wanting to do something similar for some time now for my domestic audience.

  Putting it all together is quite an effort, are you satisfied on the returns considering the time/effort you've put into it?

• by hifix on 12/6/24, 12:19 AM

  Great work! Like a lot of millenials, I'm on call for any issues my parents have with their Android devices but I imagine there are a lot of elderly people out there without that support.

• by 71bw on 12/6/24, 7:27 AM

  100% down to help you translate the thing into Polish if you're interested. balu [symbol] xdapierdolnik [period] pl

• by jacooper on 12/6/24, 9:57 AM

  This is great! Are there any plans to translate it into other languages? With Ai it should be doable.

• by Kwpolska on 12/6/24, 7:44 AM

  You talk about the chicken-and-egg problem when using a phone, but doesn't your course itself present one? To do the course, you need to have fairly good computer skills, and that assumes someone handles the purchase for you. How many seniors are actually in that position, and how many are completely lost when it comes to any digital devices?

• by 1oooqooq on 12/7/24, 1:38 PM

  the course website feels like the exact type of scam i ward elderly people off.

• by astrodude on 12/6/24, 1:13 PM

  What Google should have done long time ago