Remotes for Grandma

1. VeliciaL
   February 28th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

   If only the blasted things were built that simple in the first place...

2. Carrie H
   February 28th, 2009 at 11:39 pm

   Oy! I had to do something eerily similar to my grandmother's remote due to the new digital converter box.

3. AJ
   March 1st, 2009 at 12:08 am

   Another good book is The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

   Device complexity is a primary consideration in my purchases. The worst culprits are all-in-one gadgets where you'll never use half the functions... like a boom box that has a cassette deck, clock, alarm for the clock and a remote control for the (hello???) hand-held boom box.

4. Justin
   March 1st, 2009 at 1:12 am

   Why did I never think of this?!

5. hwang buk-les
   March 1st, 2009 at 1:54 am

   brilliant until granny sits on the thing & unknowingly hits a dozen buttons she's never even laid eyes on before, prompting a barrage of late-night phone calls to all her non-clueless relatives

6. Evilbeagle
   March 1st, 2009 at 5:26 am

   Both my grannies, well into their 80's, could probably teach me how to use the remotes.

   But I agree with VeliciaL. They should be that simple to begin with!

7. maxi
   March 1st, 2009 at 8:54 am

   this is really a cool and smart way of making remote controls easier to use especially for old people! thanks for the idea!

8. andiscandis
   March 1st, 2009 at 2:26 pm

   Thanks for the idea! I'm going to do that to my remotes from now on when my parents visit. If my dad asks how to turn the TV off one more time, I'm going to go ape shit.

9. tigergal39
   March 1st, 2009 at 5:18 pm

   This is too, too funny, but quite accurate.

   I used to put stickers on the remote for mom, and tape over the channel up/down on the TV. She never could figure out why she had to have the TV on 3 to watch from the cable box.

10. Skipweasel
    March 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm

    Yes PLEASE!

11. Nicholas Dollak
    March 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 am

    I should have tried that! Years ago, I lived a few km away from a very old (90+) lady who constantly needed people to open jars, rake leaves, etc. One time she was interviewed by a local cable station. It took a lot of explaining afterward to get her to understand that, since neither she nor her friends (nor I) had cable TV, we couldn't watch her interview as it was broadcast. But they would give her a videotape of the interview. This resulted in me explaining videotape to her, then driving her to a store so we could shop for a VCR. (I picked out one that was very basic, with a simple remote control.) I hooked everything up for her, showed her how it worked, and wrote simple directions with pictures.

    Not simple enough! She'd click random buttons without looking, not have any idea how to turn things on/off/down, and I'd get calls from her in which I could hear deafening static roaring in the background. Then I tried painting circles around the buttons, but since she insisted on looking at the TV while poking buttons it did no good. I got a really simple universal remote for her --- still no improvement.

    Eventually she got tired of watching her one videotape (Not being a movie person, the concept of renting videos was anathema to her) and decided the VCR was more trouble than it was worth, since I seemed to be the only person she knew who could get it to work properly. So she had me unplug it, wrap it in a bag, put it in another bag... wait! It turned out she didn't want anyone to know she was throwing away a VCR, because they might take it, plug it in and watch her! Although she could use an audio-cassette recorder/player just fine, I could not explain that the VCR worked on the same principle --- unless the cassette is in the machine, nobody can watch her interview. Anyway, my family acquired a rather bare-bones "new" VCR that day.

    To her credit, I must add (because it really sounds like I'm bad-mouthing her although I'm just relating a humorous anecdote about "future shock"), she spoke five languages fluently and at one time had run a service whereby one could learn a foreign language over the telephone. We all have our strengths & weaknesses!

12. Miss Cellania
    March 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Great story, Nicholas!

    My problem is that the labels are too small to read.

    I had a remote from a cable company one time that I thought (at first) was a paragon of simplicity. There was no numeric keypad, since there were only 12 or so channels. But wait! There was one button for "on" and another for "off". Duh. There was a "channel up" button and a "channel down" button. You don't need both of those unless you have enough channels to necessitate a numeric keypad.

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