I am on a quest to set up an iPad for people with mild cognitive impairment – to make things simpler. Using the phone can become difficult for folks with MCI or Parkinson’s – trying to remember all of those numbers or just clicking on M1 for this person or M2 for that person. I have a neighbor who calls and about 75% of the time she means to call someone else. She always says that the “lines are crossed.” It is not possible to explain that that is not possible. I thought that it would be great to use the iPad in such a way that it could make calls or facetime others, but if it had custom icons with the faces of the people that are the caretakers. One click to call a caretaker. That would be much easier than using a phone.
I first dabbled with an app called aHomeIcon by Mokten Pty Ltd. It allows you to create a custom icon for your home screen and one touch to do things like: call someone on your contact list, send a message, show a photo, or bring up a URL. The app is $0.99 which is great. I’ve been playing around with it and was able to set up a custom icon to call one of my contacts and also to skype one of my contacts. I set it up to show a few photos – which are pictures of pills. I thought that it would be good for people who needed a bit of assistance to have quick and easy access to their current pills. When clicking on the custom icon it asks about opening it up in aHomeIcon and you have to agree. That might trip up someone who was using this as an aid. So, additional testing is necessary.
Today, I downloaded another app called Workflow. It seems to be uber powerful.
I need to learn much more about it in order to make it useful. Here are some links I don’t want to lose:
- Workflow Tips for Beginners from sayzlim.net
- A podcast by Federico Viticci and Fraser Speirs: Workflow – Variables and Built-in Actions
- Federico Viticci: Workflow Update Brings Ability to Interact with Any Web API
- Andy’s Workflow app and tutorial YouTube video
- App Chasers How to Use Workflow to Automate your iPhone and iPad video.