I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly | Hacker News Reader

I spent a year building an Android course for the elderly

kopiascsaba.hu

208 pointskcsaba296 comments

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.

People should just stop including those warnings. Unless they are a google, FB or some other juicy politically rich target for the EU to make an example of, they are a complete waste of time. Nobody is going to hassle you about it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true. There is at least one organization out there launching privacy suits to extract settlements from small players.

Wow... Do you know the orgs name?

I am just going to leave this here: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Yeah, you better comply. And it is also pretty simple — if you don't so anything that requires that you get informed consent from your users you don't need to ask them.

Each combination of personal datum and purpose requires such consent if it isn't a strictly needed purpose (legitimate interest). Example: If you have an online shop you can e.g. collect someones address for the purpose of shipping — if they order and enter there address the user implicitly gave you their informed consent that they agree to you using that address to ship the product to them. Logical: when they order and pay money it can be assumed they want to give their address for that purpose.

They did not give you consent to sell that same address off to the highest bidder. If that is what you need to do, you would have to explicitly ask them to whom you want to sell that data and what they plan to do with it — same data, but different purpose. Not legitimate interest since you don't strictly need to do that to sell a product. And you better have a clear wording describing that purpose otherwise you collected uninformed consent and that is worth zlich. If you feel like you need to trick users into agreeing, that is what the law aims to prevent.

IP adresses and such have also been ruled personal data. Server side logging for technical purposes is legitimate interest, but storing the same data anywhere (not only cookies!) for the purpose of ad tracking requires you to get the users informed consent before collecting the data. You can assume that if it can be used to personally identify a user in a sea of users, it is personal data, even if it needs to be used in conjunction with other data to reach that identifiability.

Also: if there is a million "No" switches with two menu layers and one green "Accept" button: you created a nice toy there, but it didn't gather informed concent from your user and is therefore utterly useless. Informed consent must be given freely. If you make one easier than the other it hasn't been given freely. If you visually code one as the good/default and the other as the bad/meaningless/complicated choice, the choice was not made freely. Play stupid games, win stupid prices.

The law is pretty clear on all that, lived reality hasn't cought up yet and people pay real money for that. I recommend that you just read the law, it is probably worth to read instead of copying what everybody else (including the big ones) are doing.

But isn't the cookie banner for asking permission to use third party cookies? I don't think I ever have seen a cookie banner asking if I agree to my data being sold.

Why do you think website operators want to place those third party cookies on your PC?

There's only one legitimate use for them, which is for ancient corporate login workflows that shouldn't exist anymore. Every other use of them generally is just for targeted advertising, and with it sale of data, or using them for internal analytics.

Usually they don't really mention the selling data part upfront; it's hidden somewhere in the giant modals that they make you click through. There's also the related problem that Google is an information guzzler, and anything that enters it's ecosystem has a chance to get used by them for advertising, meaning that these giant modals also get shown for webpages that use Analytics. That last one is how you often see sites without ads get those giant modals.

Arguably they should've been blocked by the user agent years ago, and Mozilla has already done so. Google however cannot do so with Chrome because of their conflict of interest in the ad market; the UK has determined that if Chrome kills third party cookies, all their replacements would just punt Google into unfair competition. It's probably the strongest argument I can think of as to why Chrome should be split off from Google - a browser that cannot meaningfully protect a user against bad actors because of the operator being a monopolist bad actor shouldn't be used at all.

Mere (same site) login cookies require no modals or confirmation since the user implicitly consents to them when they authenticate (most users expect their login to be preserved when they changes pages and/or reload the site.) That said, it's still considered a courtesy/good practice to inform users before placing them regardless.

I would imagine 95% of cookies are not selling data but giving your data away in exchange for the other services.

1. Because they are using GA4 feeding info to Google.

2. Because they have some advertising pixel / api set up feeding info to Meta.

I would guess sites like Hubspot, Salesforce, or Github might actually be selling data.

Yeah but the law didn't invent cookie banners, people who (intentionally mis-)interpreting the law did. Then in the public eye it got reduced to "You need a cookie banner" and people jumped on the bandwagon, because other sides had them so apparently you need to have them too. Many of those cookie banners are factually at odds with current EU law. But hey everything is a cargo cult these days.

Legally the law is just: You have to ask for informed consent that has to be given freely for each purpose. How you ask and how you inform is not defined precisely, except for negative examples what isn't considered informed consent or freely given consent etc.

If someone just clicks "Accept All" that person wasn't informed. So cool that you made them click, but you could also just have left it away, since it didn't give you the thing the law required you to get.

That means real datahogs would probably need to inform people in a many slides long presentation or a feature length film before they could actually get even close to receiving something resembling informed consent. That is ofc totally unpractical and would hurt their business of data-hogging.

Now the EU came at this with the base assumption that prvacy is a right that needs to be protected in a way that it cannot be simply given away without informed free consent. So if it hurts databogs, that is one of the intended side effects.

If my friends Pizza place wants to put ads onto my website that is entirely possible without any tracking he can give me a JPEG or a video and I put it onto my website as static content. Just the current way of advertisements with 300+ third parties would become harder.

If it’s factually at odds with current EU law why does the official EU website use them https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

Because it’s a poorly designed regulation and there is a group of people who can’t accept that the EU over-regulates and is bad at writing any regulation remotely related to technology.

If a government has trouble complying with the “spirit” (as many people use in argument) of their own regulation then the regulation is poorly designed and not useful.

https://commission.europa.eu/cookies-policy_en#:~:text=Every....

‘Every time you visit the Commission’s websites, you will be prompted to accept or refuse cookies.

The purpose is to enable the site to remember your preferences (such as user name, language, etc.) for a certain period of time.’

Check out the recent paywalls by EU Newspapers like Der Spiegel where it's a 'pay or consent' cookie popup.

Those are most likely illegal too, although local DPAs have been mucking with allowing them.

The CJEU however doesn't seem to like the practice, considering Meta/Facebook wants to do the same scheme, and as a general rule, when a major company does it, it'll eventually get a decision from the CJEU.

By the letter of the law these cookie paywalls are actually illegal. I assume the news sites are intentionally taking the risk till there is legal clarification/precedent.

I wish them that the EU comes crashing down with a hammer and demands all ad revenue of that time back.

Or they just stop with all this nonsense by not having third party tracking cookies in the first place. Legitimate usage of cookies doesn’t need such a banner.

Thank you so much for the feedback, that pesky banner indeed. I have fixed both issues. I mean the banner is still annoying, but way smaller.

>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.

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?

I wanted to:) And you know what the funny thing is, if i give the course for free, no-one watches it.

I did reach out to several people in my friendship, gave them free the course just to get feedback. None of them watched it, so thats very, very surprising for me. Maybe i should go up to random strangers and PAY THEM in order to give them something that would benefit them - and maybe get some feedback:))

But on the other hand, I've got very lovely reviews on udemy, so apparently those who find it love it and thats very encouraging.

> Maybe i should go up to random strangers and PAY THEM in order to give them something that would benefit them

It is pretty normal to compensate people for their time in my limited experience (both as subject and from what I hear about user testing). Usually it's a pretty small amount, not like a normal salary but a bit more than a cup of coffee for maybe 30-45 minutes of their time (assuming they don't have to travel to you in addition). They are helping you create a commercial product, it is not weird to do something in return, although I understand also what you're saying about how they might benefit from it themselves

Perhaps you could do a small amount, say (the equivalent cost of) a good cup of coffee, plus a free copy of the course so they can use it themselves and show some others? That spreads the word in addition to them feeling compensated

I'm not a marketing expert though, just going off of what I hear and experienced from other companies

Used to give $5 starbucks cards or relevant swag (pens, cups, t-shirts) in exchange for 15-20 minutes of one to one f2f feedback.

That sounds appropriate. I think I've usually seen slightly higher values, but then also usually for half an hour or a little bit more time so that matches up

Yes, the slightly higher current values are probably keeping pace with the 'flation.

> Maybe i should go up to random strangers and PAY THEM in order to give them something that would benefit them

It may not benefit them, it hasn't been tested. It will benefit you, because it will provide testing.

It might be worth thinking of more natural partners like senior centers, libraries, etc. Maybe start with more of a open Q&A session and show them how to navigate the course to answer their questions.

Such a tremendous amount of work, really Kudos! So cool.

Thank you so much! Indeed i will have a look into that as well!

Libraries have tech support help sessions.

FREE SEMINAR ON SMARTPHONES!

Come along for a coffee (free!) and a showing of a film that will teach you how to use your smartphone.

Your grandkids will be bowled over by your new tech abilities!

All we ask is for you to answer an anonymous questionnaire at the end. No need to give any personal details.

===

Or something like that...?

Yeah, my problem with all that is its 8hours long, showing just parts of it is not enough really. I'd like to hear from ones who really do it in its entirety. What they struggled with, aht aas good, what wss awful. Etc.

WHAT?!?!

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.

>the hardware power button has become the tool to invoke an assistant.

I motherfucking hate this with extreme and excessive prejudice. The fucking power button ends up having nothing to do with fucking power, what level of "War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery" are we even talking about at that point?

Fortunately, my phone (a Sony Xperia) has an option to change it back to turning the fucking phone on/off, but it's still not the default and it's fucking stupid and I fucking hate it.

// 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.

ALL versions of Android OS allows you to set the power button back to power on long-press - you just have to go back into settings to change it; although the Pixel range had a recent update change to Gemini as default. Similar to the double-tap for quick camera.

I prefer it this way, long press = assistant, double press = camera. And I believe that the elderly would also prefer this, if they do actively use an assistant to ask questions.

I have hot-word detection turned off, so I think the button is a good compromise.

If you press it long enough, it will shutdown, even if you didn't touch anything in the assistant.

I just held it for around 25 seconds on a Pixel 8 and it did nothing (except for starting the assistant). I think if you hold it even longer then it does some kind of reset, which isn't a clean shutdown.

I don't mind the repurposing of the power button. I prefer it being used for something else, since I don't power it off very often.

The only thing which bothers me a bit in the repurposed state is that the power-off menu includes an emergency button, which is now hidden behind a couple of levels of swiping and clicking. And accessing it from the lock screen again varies among vendors.

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

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.

thanks,

here are a couple of links to the course:

https://smartphonehowto.com/gift/ - "Save time & help your loved ones" - for people who might want to introduce this course to someone they know

https://smartphonehowto.com/ - "Stay connected with family and friends" - for people who might want to take this course

Another thing that's difficult, is that phones that were advertised as old-person-friendlly, physically were not. Black buttons on black background, etc. Maybe this sotuation has improved.

Make sure the old-person in your life has hand lotion on. Touch screens are not tuned to their drier skin.

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!

I understand that, I'm like that as well. And not many in my circles are similarly wired. I like to tinker with electronics and different systems and also as a SWE coding random stuff, but not everyone is wired like that.

Long time ago when we were moving, i found an old school book of mine from 7th grade elementary: there was a kid with a wrench repairing a bicycle on the front cover. I remember thinking: thats not really a thing anymore.

>They just wanted their stuff to work.

That's the normal attitude people have to almost everything.

I'm sure you can name something you only care to see work and not know how it works; electronics is that to that other person.

It's also why software have (d)evolved to remove customization, because most people don't change the defaults anyway (they don't even know what a "default" is besides the financial term, maybe).

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.

Thank you for your kind words!

Yes. My dad needs very explicit step-by-step instructions. Even to the point of I can't just say hit Ctrl-C. I have to tell him to hold down the Control key and then hit the C key while still holding down the Control key.

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!

Can you share resources which you feel are the most useful for a beginner? I've been looking for course material for my mother.

Overall, Senior Planet from AARP has some great resources. They even run support groups for victims of fraud. https://seniorplanet.org/on-demand/

Generations is pretty good if not a little dated but all free. http://www.generationsonline.com/

Drive your learning is great collaboration between AT&T and Digitunity. I'm uncertain if every course is free but I'm really loving their cybersecurity lessons. http://www.driveyourlearning.org/

Oasis has some great videos as well. Again, I appreciate their safety lessons. https://connections.oasisnet.org/Safety/

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?

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!

Thank you!

Yeah, you are partly right about that (they are not there for confusion's sake).

I just didn't had the stomach to leave those things unmentioned as I'm personally not fond of the monopoly either. So thought to still at least put somewhere at the end. Make some poweruser grandmas:)

Whatsapp, indeed is a good idea, will add that, thanks!

>Whatsapp, indeed is a good idea, will add that, thanks!

And then, since you have one base covered for one "sphere" of the world, you also need to cover Telegram and Facebook Messenger, rofl

But i have those already;)

Thanks for the reply! I completely understand, particularly regarding the monopoly, but do consider stuff that's technically 'non-standard' in an advanced module. It's hard enough to explain to my mum (at least) one concept - explaining a secondary app store, or to use a browser that none of her friends would be using isn't the quickest route to her grasping stuff (or indeed comparing experiences with her friends).

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.

Agreed. If I were to get my mom to try this course, the first thing she will comment on is that she can't understand the accent. Ironically her own accent is much stronger. She just isn't very tolerant when it comes to focusing on something.

Haha, yeah guys you are right, sadly not much I can do about it, esp. after the fact:) There are a ton of free previews so one can figure out if its for them or not.

I even mention at the end of the intro that if you can put up with my accent, you'll be good to go:)

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.

it's like saying "we didn't like the radio on your Hyundai's so we got all bmws"

most of the world cannot even afford S or A models from Samsung.

Not really. It's not like iPads are 10x the price of a cheap Android device. They're like 2x. Factor in time and the maths makes even more sense.

> It’s not like iPads are 10x the price of a cheap Android device. They’re like 2x.

I’m seeing about 3-4:1 comparing reconditioned iPads to cheap-but-not-reconditioned new Android tablets, 10:1 is closer than 2:1 for new-to-new.

outside of usa and Europe, apple tax is close to 6-10:1 instead of 3-4:1

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.

Thank you so much for your feedback, someone before you already mentioned the cookie banner thing, and I was just working on it. Although can't remove but made it way smaller.

It's for comments like the above that this is a terrible place to ask for feedback on what you've done.

I don't think people realise how much of a weird bubble this site is. Take the comments above about how you like learning stuff but most people don't:

That means WE'RE the weird ones, not most people!

The last thing you want is people like us giving feedback. Also the F-Droid stuff... I mean come on.

Your target market is clueless. They don't care about cookies banners, advanced customisation, software freedoms, etc. They just want to message their grandkids online and are probably terrified of being scammed out of their savings. They probably don't like change or learning complicated new things either.

But hey, I'm not one. Go and speak to your market and see what they want, if anything. And ignore 95% of comments here. Most people aren't as paranoid as techies.

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.

I tried to use the Find My Phone feature with my Samsung account a couple days ago. Log into Samsung with Google, on my friend's device as I've lost my phone, and Google says "we've sent a prompt to your phone to log in"... the phone that I'm trying to find. No alternative options, I just got frustrated and gave up and luckily found it on my own. Still not over how incredibly stupid that was.

As an alternative you could set up 2FA on their google accounts, and then they can have a 2FA app on their phone (not just google-authenticator, any app you trust can be good).

Then they would have a fixed place where they can find the 2FA code and not to mess around with the notifications. It's more complicated but more robust as well.

For your parents. Several nongoogle email platforms NEVER bother opt-outers with captchas, 2fa, or other NONsense.

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

Yes, yes, yes! I even talk about how hard it is to distinguish between these two things. Even as a user who just want to learn how to use it, kind of hopeless to find something amongst the dev articles/tutorials.

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?

Thank you, it's an honor you think that!

I don't know of any higher authority on what to call it actually. Technically that "app" (it is an android app just like any other) is called a launcher, i went with desktop, but I also like home screen, and I think I probably use these terms interchangeably in the course.

(You actually can install a different launcher if you are not happy with yours.)

> i went with desktop, but I also like home screen, and I think I probably use these terms interchangeably

This might be best to have be configurable, so that I can pick what a family member already knows

Some people have previously used a computer professionally and know what a desktop is, so for them it's fine to use the word (my dad would be one of those). Others have more smartphone experience and I think I use the words home screen (my mom I think) and start screen (my grandma). It's like you mention a word and see how they react to it: do they get what concept you're referring to from the word's components? Do they repeat it back to you later, did it stick, or do they at least understand it the next time you say it? When you ask "what screen do you get when you turn the device on", what word do they use? I base my wording on things like that, so it's not just region- or family-specific but even person-specific, in my experience

Honestly, I think you're right about "launcher" being the technically correct term. I don't know, maybe the correct way to approach the challenges to just mention that there are multiple ways to refer to the same thing?

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.

Thank you so much, I would really appreciate any feedback about that!

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.

Hi! I think your best bet would be the developer.android.com documentation.

Although there are code references, most of them explain the concepts in the beginning or inbetween. Just ignore the code parts.

Here is an example for the notifications you mentioned: https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/notifications

But you can find info on the other topics in here as well.

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?

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.

Thank you!

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

Thank you I really appreciate!

Please see my comment below about translations though!

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

Yeah, this is something I'd be interested in if available in other languages!

Yeah, thank you for your interest! I've got some messages about that as well.

But first i'd like to see enouh traffic on the course in the most popular language available and then I'll consider putting more effort into it.

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?

I'm not sure how would you like author to address that. If a user is not able to navigate any computer, he won't even reach the course or any advertisement. He needs at least some help to start out.

Also, to be fair, the site has a clear video that shows step-by-step process of ... purchasing the course.

I think our senior population changes and there are plenty of them that had contact with desktop and touchscreen devices, but get easily confused and can't keep up with updates. I know many such people and would love something like that, but translated.

Yes, exactly, thank you.

A print book would be a fine way to address the problem. While this book won’t be able to show video, it could still do a lot with text and screenshots. And then, videos could be moved into the companion app.

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

What Google should have done long time ago

Reply on news.ycombinator.com