The tablet is in the drawer. You set it up over Thanksgiving, showed her twice, wrote the password on a sticky note. She used it for a week. Now it's in the drawer with the cords still coiled.
It is very tempting to read this as stubbornness, or as decline. It is almost never either. What actually happened is that the device kept giving her small opportunities to fail in front of her family, and she made a reasonable decision to stop taking them.
Here's what to look for instead — five things that quietly decide whether a device gets used or drawered.
· It asks her to remember things
Passwords, PINs, which app does what, which of the four remotes turns on the TV. Every one of these is a memory test with an audience. A device that logs itself out weekly isn't secure — it's just a device that quizzes her every Tuesday and eventually wins.
The sentence: If it has a password she must recall, it will end up in the drawer. Look for devices that stay signed in, permanently.
· Nothing is where she left it
Apps update and move. Notification badges appear. An ad slides in. For someone navigating by spatial memory — the blue one, second row, left side — a rearranged screen isn't a minor annoyance, it's a total loss of the map. She didn't forget how to use it. It changed while she wasn't looking.
The sentence: Ask: does the home screen look identical every single time? If an update can rearrange it, it will, and she'll stop trusting it.
· The text is too small, and making it bigger breaks the layout
Most software treats large-text mode as an accessibility checkbox rather than a real layout. Bump the font and watch buttons collide and labels truncate. She now has a choice between reading it and using it. Also worth knowing: contrast matters more than size after about 65. Grey-on-white at 20px can be harder than black-on-white at 16px.
The sentence: Test it at the largest system font size before you buy. If buttons overlap or text is cut off, it was never designed for her.
· Every tap is a small risk
If a wrong tap might buy something, delete a photo, call a stranger, or summon a pop-up she can't dismiss, then the rational strategy is to touch nothing. People who've been scammed once — or who've watched a friend get scammed — become extremely conservative with taps, and the more careful she is, the less she uses it.
The sentence: Ask yourself: what's the worst thing one wrong tap can do? If the answer includes “buy something” or “delete something,” that's why she's not tapping.
· It talks down to her
Cartoon fonts. Exclamation marks. “Oops! Let's try that again!” Tutorial pop-ups that reappear forever. She raised you, ran a household, held a job, buried a husband. Software that congratulates her for opening an app is telling her exactly what it thinks of her, and she can hear it.
The sentence: Read the on-screen copy out loud. If you'd be embarrassed to say it to her face, don't put it in her house.
The actual test
Before you buy anything, try this. Hand it to her cold — no setup, no demonstration, no hovering — and ask her to do one real thing. Call her sister. See a photo of the grandkids. Then say nothing for two full minutes. It will feel like a very long two minutes.
Watch where she hesitates. That hesitation is the product's answer to whether it was designed for her or for the person buying it.
What good looks like
- One screen, unchanging. Same things in the same places, forever.
- Signed in permanently. No password, no timeout, no lock screen.
- Voice as a real option, not a gimmick — because speaking is the one interface that never needed learning.
- Nothing destructive is one tap away. Big consequences require confirmation from a human who isn't her.
- Large type by default, with contrast that survives it.
- Adult tone. Plain sentences. No exclamation marks.
None of this is about capability. It's about whether the device is a place she can be competent. Get that right and it comes out of the drawer on its own.