When I am at home, for better and worse, I mostly only spend time with people who are very sophisticated in their technology consumption and tend to be about my age (give or take a few decades).
In traveling for vacation to the East Coast this past week I have spent more time than usual watching people outside of my age range and outside of the Valley interacting with technology.
The first moment that struck me on my trip was watching an older woman at the airport gate loudly FaceTiming with her daughter for 20 minutes, by awkwardly holding her phone in front of her face, asking about her grandchildren.
It struck me because I never use FaceTime. I frankly hate it. I generally dislike talking live on the phone, but if I am forced to I prefer to keep it audio only so I can multitask and avoid the inevitable network hiccups. But this grandma clearly loved it, even if it looked like a tiring way to hold your phone, and seemed unconcerned with the jittery image. She even said at one point during her call “it isn’t the same thing as seeing you, but at least I get to see your tiny face.” She said it so sincerely.
The morning after I landed, a friend of my in-laws told the story of her 89-year-old mother’s fabulous reaction when she tried an Oculus. Like the countless videos of grandmas and grandpas trying Oculus that can be seen on YouTube, she loved it and “didn’t want to take it off.” If you haven’t seen these videos, just search for ‘grandma oculus’.
These little vignettes got me thinking. Perhaps it is time to take developing technology for the elderly (around 70+ year-olds) a bit more seriously than adding accessibility mode to devices and saying we should make phones with bigger screens and buttons.
The reasons people don’t develop technology seriously for the elderly seem obvious. Since older people generally are not out looking for new things—and have a harder time learning new things —they typically don’t adopt new products easily. They also don’t seem on paper like a very valuable demographic to capture since in general they have less disposable income, and getting the adoption of the elderly doesn’t serve as a beach-head to other demographics the way teens do. Finally, the reality is that most technologists like developing things for themselves and their friends, which tends to leave the elderly out.
But, in these rationales for avoiding developing technology for the elderly there is one thing that to me seems like a major oversight. There are some technologies that seem like they are best suited for meeting the needs of the elderly.
Which brings me back to VR.
I am an unabashed VR skeptic. My personal experience demoing Oculus and its cousins is that people are being exceedingly generous when describing the state of the technology and how close it is to being ready, even for compelling gaming applications. I think all the accounts people gushingly retell of “You just have to try it to understand it” are lazy, and I worry more driven by social pressure than actual experience. My experience is that the demos aren’t that good, and there are countless hurdles to overcome before anyone other than tinkerers will be using it.
That said, we have all seen the demos of grandma trying Oculus and loving it. Those emotions and reactions are real. To me, the subtext of those videos have always been, “Look, this technology is so amazing even grandma loves it.” But I am starting to think that is missing the point, which is really “This isn’t really that good yet, but it is close enough that it seems like magic to grandma!”
For people with impaired mobility and senses, I can totally accept that VR today is experientially deeply satisfying. It allows them to do things that they can no longer do, which probably inspires deep emotional connection. And they are probably the most forgiving customers with regards to the sensory flaws of the experience.
So, perhaps all this talk of Oculus starting out with the gaming community is wrong. Instead VR should start with the oldest, most in-need, and most forgiving customers, and work its way back to more demanding populations.
In some ways it does feel like the VR hype-cycle is, at least momentarily, on the decline. I hear less enthusiasm about it being a totally disruptive near-term force and more talk about its enterprise and industrial uses, following a path not dissimilar to Bitcoin. I personally think even these are overblown and far from compelling.
That said, I am starting to think that the octogenarians might very likely be “jacking in” before me.