After getting mom almost fully settled in her new assisted living apartment, I am now working on some of the small things that will make her day to day living a little easier. One constant source of irritation for her has been small buttons on all things electronic. Her CD player is often getting switched over to another mode because her fingers and eye sight just do not equal that of the twenty-something year old engineers that designed the thing. The same is true for the TV controller. She bumps the mode switch all of the time and then it will not control the TV and she does not know why.
I have found a few candidates for big button remote controls while browsing around the web, but nothing yet that is as simple as the old Zenith Space Command above. I think that some enterprising university could guarantee job placement for their graduating engineers if they offered only one course in designing consumer electronics for the aged. Just because it is possible to control the Space Shuttle from a La-Z-Boy on your back porch does not mean that it is a good idea to give the reins to grandma'. She could probably find a way to launch predator drones from an Aegis Combat System on a Guided Missile Destroyer in the Pacific without breaking a sweat. And all the while she would think that she was tuning in to Jeopardy.
2 comments:
Sounds like a serious marketing opportunity to me! How many of us are, shall we say, seeing challenged? Can I even begin to tell you what happens when I try to use an iPod and I don't have my glasses on??? Oh, wait, maybe Chris should tell you that!
I am so glad that it is a big ocean and that you do not have to keep to a twelve foot wide lane.
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