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Comment by rjh232 | Hacker News Reader

I'm one of the developers -- we're trying to get as much feedback as we can get, so please let us know your thoughts, good or (especially) bad. As far as privacy, the caretaker ("Manager" is the term we're using for the application) only screens incoming mail when it is NOT from someone already in the address book. We hope that that minimizes the concern, even though it clearly doesn't entirely negate it.

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This is essentially the idea that we've been applying to seed funding firms with. The market for products for the elderly is huge, and software firms largely don't care about it. So, I think it is a great idea (haven't looked at your implementation yet).

I'll share with you one insight we had from our brainstorming sessions: we thought it would be a good idea to make the product a desktop email client that runs on startup rather than a web page (tagline: "Outlook for the elderly. Except it doesn't suck like Outlook."). I just remember how difficult it was for my father to learn how to find the browser, open the browser, go to gmail, remember his password, etc. And yet for many users, email is 90%+ of what they use their computer for. There's no reason it should be complicated (or use small fonts!).

However, making a website probably entails less up-front investment and allows you to test the market. It's a great idea, and I wish more people would focus on this underserved market.

I think making it a desktop client is a great idea. My father is still inherently a little less trusting of "the internet" and web browsers, but he's fine with using an application for email. It sounds sort of silly.. but if that's what it takes to crack the elderly market, it's worth looking into.

Great idea for a product!

I would package this as a "desktop app" that is really just a thin shell around WebKit or System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser.

Grandpa thinks it's a desktop app and has a single icon to click on, but from a development and maintenance perspective you get all the benefits of the web.

You forgot xulrunner. Firefox is just a thin shell around xulrunner, after all.

I think an appliance is the ideal end-product. Gift gramps email in a box, a very limited, PawPaw specific notebook. All it does is email and photos.

Picwing is something like this.

One of these projects might help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser#Software

Nicely done, I think this is an exceptionally good idea. The interfaces for the product look great.

My one suggestion would be to do some work on the interface of your website itself. Given what you've done on the application interface I'm sure you guys are capable of better. (Had this link not been from HN I most certainly would not have given this product the time of day, based on the website.)

Thanks! I agree that the website itself needs some work; the landing page is intentionally underdeveloped to direct active users to their interfaces, but it needs an overhaul. Anyone have any specific design tips for implementation?

It's clear this has a market.

I did want to point out that my own grandparents are 75-ish, and use gmail just fine, and have a blog that they update regularly.

So I'm not sure if this market will be increasing, or decreasing. Over a long enough time frame, I think it probably will be decreasing, as more tech-savvy users get older.

We got this objection a lot. My father's generation has another 20 or 30 years of life expectancy given current technology. I think it's a little silly to write off a huge, underserved market because you only have two or three decades to sell to it. By that time, one ought to be able to move on to their second product.

Also, my father's generation is more used to paying for things of value compared to my generation. It could be a good market.

Domestically... I think you're right. But what about internationally? I know lots of Indian immigrants that would love to have their elderly parents back in India using this. Is the number of computer inept grandparents with internet access shrinking or growing, globally?

I was going to make a similar comment. My grandparents are mid-80s and have been using email for at least 14 years. My grandmother would be insulted if someone suggested she switched to the simplified elderly email service. However, she experienced a drastic decline in vision last year and now has someone read her email to her.

The market for older people who need a different mail client because they don't know how to use email is probably on the decline. But, the market for older people who need a different mail client because their eyes are going bad or they can't type well anymore is probably on the rise.

One other comment is that PawPawMail sounds like you are marketing to grandfathers. In my limited experience, the grandmothers (and aunts, moms, daughters) send far more email.

When I visit the site, it says: "Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash."

Do all elderly people have Flash?

No; and the user interface is entirely built for the Flash player, which might limit it somewhat in its reach. Our thought is that they are unlikely to need PawPawMail in the first place if they have a home computer that they are completely capable of using without a small degree of setup by a friend/manager.

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