Needs work could be great
As of now, I’m a little underwhelmed with the reality of this app/machine. I’ll start with the pros: it is nice to be able to connect by video with my grandparent. Also nice to text back and forth and receive audio clips and pics. The games are a nice touch, too. Also, the volume is sufficiently loud for my grandparent who’s hard of hearing. Great basics there. Here are the cons. These are resolvable and I hope you will invest in some of these suggestions. Most importantly, there is no main menu (touch screen) for the Elliq end user to select activities. Adding a touchscreen menu would greatly enhance ease of use. Just think about using your iPhone, isn’t it nice to be able to type, swipe and scroll? Who wants to walk Siri through everything you want to do? You get the picture. My grandparent has to tell Elliq everything she wants to do and let me tell you it takes several tries most often to get Elliq to understand and comply. I’ve sat next to my grandparent and observed…for example, saying “Elliq call Jane smith” should be an easily executable prompt. Frequently, it is not. The machine struggles. This need to frequently repeat and rephrase prompts reduces the end user’s propensity to use Elliq. Next, in the app, you can only send one picture at a time. That’s a minor issue but it would be nice to be able to select a few photos at once to send to the end user. Further, my grandparent can view received photos in a gallery but cannot save any received photos as the Elliq screensaver or have a screensaver photo carousel. This tech is in $30 photo frames. You can do this. This is an easy value add that would meaningfully enhance the end user experience. Also, the ability to download pics and audio files that the Elliq end user sends would be great. Like many, I’m sure, she has Elliq on a table in the living room next to her favorite chair. When she’s not talking with Elliq it would be nice if she could look over and see pics her family’s sent to her. Instead, she sees screensavers of random animals and flowers. Nice, but not personal. Next, Elliq inundates my grandparent with very random questions like do you like sushi…frequently. She has been asked about sushi three times this week. She still does not like sushi. I understand asking some very random softball questions here and there to get conversation going but maybe turn down the frequency or increase the library of questions. Next, there’s no discernible continuity of conversation over time, yet. She’s been using it for over a week. I’ll update if that changes. It doesn’t seem like Elliq truly remembers what you tell it (for example, family lore or your musings over daily activities…you know, chatting like two people). Elliq does not seem to follow up on previous conversations, at least not yet. The free versions of ChatGPT and Claude seem to offer much more robust conversations and continuity. Elliq seems to interrupt the end user semi-frequently as well. Older people take time to answer and pause while giving answers. Please consider adding time for end user pausing during their responses. Hopefully that will cut down on Elliq interrupting their answers. Next, I had to spend a couple hours with elliq support to get my contact synced as my grandparent was unable to video call me. I was told it just wasn’t synced. This was a really cumbersome process. Maybe something you want to look into. I could send her texts and pics but video calls would not connect. Speaking of support, when you call their customer care line and/or support line I have spoken to the same lady several times. Sadly, she doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the elliq machine or app or how to troubleshoot beyond its most cursory functions. She always has to put me on hold and look up the answer. I know she’s looking up the answer because she says she has to research it or look up the answer just about every time I ask a question. Tech support should have a better understanding of the product. Please give them more robust training and better tools. She’s very pleasant but we need efficiency. The user feeling is that you have offloaded all customer care and tech support onto a small third party that has the same product manual end users have…which is so minuscule and vague we are in an ouroboros. We need more specificity. Having a well versed tech/care team shows users you’re invested in their experience and respectful of their time. Please take my feedback seriously and fix some of these easy dunk issues. Show us you actually care about the users. If nothing else, give the Elliq end user a touch screen activity menu (crucial), fix the hang up issue when using the app(it’s currently prioritizing incoming calls), and let them save pics to their Home Screen. We were so hopeful that this machine and app would be great. You CAN make it better. It really has the opportunity to be great. I’ll update this review if anything changes. Also going to make several YouTube videos and tutorials on these topics because people need to see how this actually functions. It was not possible to find a user tutorial video outside of your unboxing/setup video. Really hoping you take this constructively and make this a better experience and loneliness/companion tool for your users.
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