u/Adventurous_Data7711

My situation

Both of my grandmothers lives alone. My parents are the ones mainly keeping an eye on her, and I call occasionally like one to two month once, but honestly, it doesn't always go through, and it's not always easy to get a real sense of how she's doing. Sometimes they leave my messages unread. What I'm trying to solve is to "help the whole family know how she's doing today."

Another insipration and scary thing is that I read news about in Japan, 2024, there's around 7,000 people who died alone was not discovered until more than one month of their death. : (

I would love some advice on what you currently do or wish you have and some advice on what I want to build.

My actual app concept

The core idea is simple: let the elderly family member do one active check-in per day.

Here's how it works:

• Open the app, tap a body diagram to mark where (if anywhere) they're feeling unwell or confirm everything is fine
• Once submitted, family members get a notification with today's status
• Family members can respond with an emoji reaction or short text, so the elderly person knows: "I saw it. I care."

If no check-in happens within a set number of days (customizable: 3 days, 5 days, a week), the app sends an alert to family members.

From my last post, I appreciate all the feedback.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Aging/comments/1t4ni2n/im_building_an_app_to_help_us_stop_worrycalling/

The "passive phone activity detection" idea was actually proposed by AI lol. My original idea is to let the people who live alone to get a chance to actively do it as their wish. From the feedback, it sounds like privacy and indepenence is a big thing to a lot of you.

Would love your thoughts:

• Do you think asking an elderly parent to actively check in once a day is realistic?
• What do your family currently do?
• What kind of design would make your loved one more likely to actually use it? For example, a little fun game that you can play after daily check-in

Hi everyone,

I’ve been lurking here for a while and I keep seeing the same heart-wrenching struggle: The constant anxiety of "Are they okay?" when our elderly parents living alone don't pick up the phone.

I’m a developer, and I’m tired of the current solutions that feel like "monitoring" or "prison tracking." My goal is to build something that provides peace of mind without the nagging.

The Concept: Instead of forcing seniors to press a "Check-in" button every morning (which they often forget, leading to false alarms and police at the door), I'm working on a passive sensing app.

How it works (MVP):

1. Activity-based Safety: As long as the parent uses their phone (unlocks it, scrolls through news, or opens WhatsApp), the app silently resets a "Safety Timer." No action is required from them.
2. The "Heartbeat" Status: Family members can see a simple status: "Active 20 mins ago" or "No activity for 6 hours."
3. Gentle Nudges: If no activity is detected for a set period, the app sends a friendly "How’s your day?" notification with a big emoji to the parent. If they tap it, the timer resets.
4. Escalation: Only if they don't interact with the phone and the nudge, then the family gets an alert with the last known GPS location.

My Questions for you:

• Does your parent struggle with "forgetting" to check in with existing apps/calls?
• Would a "passive" tracker like this feel less intrusive to them?
• What is the "Red Zone" for you? (How many hours of no activity would make you panic?)

I really want to build something that respects their dignity while curing our anxiety. Would love to hear your honest (and even brutal) feedback.