[Guest Post by my father-in-law, William Haueisen, PhD., CEO of Sterling Research Group (SRG). William agreed to share his recent experience with the iPad touching the older generation that has been sadly overlooked by recently technology innovations. That older generation is rapidly growing and sometimes referred to as the silver-market because of their under-addressed needs and under-tapped purchasing power.
About SRG: SRG designs and executes high-quality, and high-volume, customer satisfaction surveys.]
Gavin and Maddie’s great grandmother, aged 86, has suffered from macular degeneration for a decade. In earlier times she was an avid reader, sometimes with multiple books “under process” at the same time. But the macular degeneration has robbed her of any ability to read. She “reads” now only by sitting under a bright light and holding a fairly strong magnifying glass. That is until a week or two ago.
Great Grandmom lives in a retirement center so meals are always a big social time. Recently she’s been hearing her friends talk about Kindles. And while she hadn’t actually seen one, she had a feeling that it might be something that could help her read again. So we took her on a shopping trip, first to Best Buy to look at Kindles. They were interesting and she was fascinated with the idea of the thing, but unfortunately, even with the text enlarged to its maximum, she couldn’t read from a Kindle except with the ubiquitous magnifying glass. Part of the problem was the lack of contrast. But, even though it didn’t help her, she sure liked the basic idea of the thing.
Next we took her to Barnes and Noble to see a Nook. No dice, not enough real estate, and otherwise the same problem with lack of contrast.
Finally, we took her to the Apple store, and after waiting in line three lines, she got her iPad. Wow, great contrast (back lighted) and very large print, and a type face (sans serif) that that made the words clear still. She could read! We loaded a couple of novels on her iPad and she went to town. She went to town when I went out of town, and within minutes of our departure, she was in trouble. Something happened that she couldn’t figure out.
Fortunately, about that time her son called from Texas, and in short time, she told him she needed a “geek” (that was her word, honestly.) Jim suggested she call Best Buy since he knew they had a Geek Squad. She did, and then the fun began. First of all, none of the Geeks had been trained on the iPad yet, so they were at a loss, and said they’d have to come to the house. They issued her an incident number and told her to log in to the Best Buy Internet site, use the incident number and pay for the consulting using her credit card.
She indicated she didn’t have Internet access. They asked her how she got the iPad, and she said her son, Bill, got it for her. How did she get her books without Internet access? She said her son, Bill, put them on the iPad for her. She would be happy to give the Geek a check, or her credit card information when they came out. They indicated they couldn’t do that, she had to pay in advance. Finally, they had mercy upon her, and agreed to be paid when they got to her apartment.
When they (two of them) arrived–the Geek didn’t have a clue because he hadn’t been trained on the iPad, but he brought one of the Apple salespeople with him, and this guy knew his stuff. Within a few minutes (2-3 at the most), they had her untangled and back in her book. She was delighted. But, when she learned that she had to pay for a hour, and they would charge her for a quarter of an hour (their minimum) she insisted they just sit down and talk to her until she used up her quarter hour. They would put the rest of her time on her “account” and she could call in again, if she needed help.
Apparently they had a good chat; they liked her, she liked them, and I suspect that she was the talk of the Geek Squad that day. Not too many 86 year olds with cutting edge technology.
So, cut to the present: she’s finished one 400 page novel–the first book she’s read in years and years, and she’s well into her second. And, what fun, lots of the “boys” in the retirement center are beating a path to her apartment to see her iPad. She’s become the hot number in the entire Manor.