Episode 26
Application Development for Older Adults with Jennifer Cain Birkmose
Aired On: September 17, 2024
Jennifer Cain Birkmose, co-founder and CEO of VivaValet, joins hosts Michael Roberts and Justin Bantuelle to discuss how medtech companies can develop applications that are user-friendly for elderly adults, or as she calls them, “olders.” You might be surprised to learn that older adults actually DO want to use apps to maintain their independence, but user-friendliness goes beyond just making the fonts larger. Jennifer explains how companies can best help this underserved population.
In this Episode
- 01:30 Challenges of App Development for Older Adults
- 05:07 The Importance of Respectful Design and Terminology
- 11:16 Designing Apps with Older Adults
- 19:43 Trust and Fraud in the Tech Industry
- 28:49 The Importance of Accessibility in App Design
Quotes From This Episode
What I’ve observed is the work we’ve done with my company called VivaValet, where we do, like in-home tech consulting or community-based tech education, they’re hungry for knowledge because they realize this is their doorway to independence and this is their doorway to continue to be in the community. And so my observation is it’s rather not that they’re incapable or not interested or willing and hungry to learn. What’s happening is that so many tech developers are actually not putting them at the table when they’re doing their basic design or UI/UX.
Jennifer Cain Birkmose
I think so much of this is a love story about the customer, whoever that customer is. Do you truly love your customer and therefore are you leaning into understanding their reality, understand what they’re trying to solve for, understand what their daily challenges are? And the more we get passionate about listening and understanding what their challenges are, the more curious we can be and more equipped we can be to design with them.
Jennifer Cain Birkmose
Every day 6,000 people in the United States turn 65, and those 65 year olds are tech savvy. And so all of us who are designing things that are tech, we’re designing a world that we’re all gonna age into ourselves. And as you design for the younger part of this generation, you are going to be having a willing participant group in the over the next 20 years.
Jennifer Cain Birkmose
