Daysome

Multizone Ltd.

About this app

Daysome shows one person, on one iPad, what day it is, what is happening now, what is coming next, and what is for tea.

That is the whole thing. There is nothing to tap.

It was built for a family member in the early stages of dementia — happy, settled, living at home, and starting to lose track of when to eat, when to drink, and when to take her tablets. She reaches for her iPad all day long, so that is where the answer lives.

WHAT SHE SEES

The day and the part of the day in large, plain words. The time, nearly as large. What is happening now, and what is coming next, in two slots that never move. What is on the menu for each meal. Weekly visitors — the cleaner, the shopping delivery — on the days they actually come. And a note from the family, which takes itself down when it stops being true.

Between things, it says how long she has. “Half an hour until tea” — in quarters and halves, the way a person says it, never “34 minutes”.

WHAT IT NEVER DOES

It never tells her she has missed anything. No red, no “overdue”, nothing struck through. Something whose time has passed simply drops off the display. A screen that tells someone they have failed creates anxiety in a person who was otherwise settled, and buys back nothing.

It never carries medication detail — no dose, no drug name, no instruction. A line that says “First set of pills, after breakfast” points at the pill box. The pill box remains the only thing that knows what has been taken.

It has no adverts, no streaks and no scores.

FOR THE FAMILY

A private code opens the whole day for editing: times, wording, how often something happens, the note of the day, and the household’s own list of meals. Meals are chosen from that list, so the display can only ever show something the family has already agreed. The carer’s screen looks nothing like hers and puts itself away after half a minute, so an iPad left mid-change goes back to being her day.

BUILT FOR THE ROOM IT SITS IN

Warm tones rather than stark white, because the ageing lens scatters light and white glares. Nothing meaningful in blue, because blue perception fades with age. Large type that also honours the text size set in iPad Settings. Words instead of symbols throughout — an icon she cannot read is worse than nothing on the screen.

It works with no internet connection, and it keeps working if a subscription lapses. Losing a day’s structure over a billing failure is not an acceptable thing to do to somebody.

Daysome is a display that shows the day. It is not a medical device, not a monitoring system, and not a substitute for anybody. It does not track whether medication has been taken, and it never will.

What’s new

Editing improvements. The day no longer breaks in the middle of a word on a phone.