China State Grid released a survey report on people over 50 years old in February, and more than 97% of them are in trouble with smart TVs
Smart TVs are not smart enough, seniors want to "talk" directly
With the development of the times, TV is no longer the focus of young people's attention, and has become a dependent product for the elderly to live and relax. Watching "News Network" every day, two episodes of TV series every day, this is still the life rhythm of many elderly people at night.
However, many smart TVs that have been replaced by households are not friendly to the elderly. They do not know how to turn on the TV or how to use the TV, which has become a problem for the elderly.
Children who seek help find that sometimes middle-aged children do not necessarily understand.
Current Situation Buying a TV to honor your parents but not using a middle-aged man
Before the Spring Festival, Zhang Qiang bought his parents a smart TV of a well-known brand, which was considered a filial piety to the second elder.
Unexpectedly, Er Lao was in trouble. There is no button on the TV, and there is no Chinese character on the remote control. After clicking the red switch button, it becomes even more circled. On the huge screen, there are posters of various plays. To play the show, you will be required to register as a member.
"I don't want to watch this, I just want to watch "News Network". The old father told Zhang Qiang, after nearly an hour of tossing, the old father didn't watch "News Network", how to teach him to use TV and ensure that he can watch the show tomorrow , again a problem.
Turn on the top box first, then turn on the TV, select the signal source, a remote control in the left hand, and a remote control in the right hand.
Afraid that his parents might not be able to handle the TV next time, Zhang Qiang wrote down the steps on a sticky note and put it on the TV cabinet.
There are a lot of complaints about similar situations on the Internet. The topic of "not using TV" is not only a topic for the elderly, but many young and middle-aged people who are accustomed to the Internet have also posted to express their dissatisfaction with the complicated operation of TV.
On Douban.com, where young people gather more, a young man who just graduated from college posted that he didn't watch TV much when he was studying in high school, and his impression was that of a set-top box, which was no different from the TV when he was a child.
When I go to college and live on campus, I seldom touch TV. When I get home from college, I find that it will not be used.
"It's okay to use Youku, Tencent, iQiyi, etc. It's similar to a mobile phone. I won't be able to do other things. After I downloaded a few apps, I got stuck when I saw the serious channels, but it was very smooth when I saw various advertising channels. ."
On Zhihu, some netizens complained about not using TV, and the title was "People who really want to watch TV with TV don't use TV at all".
The netizen claims to be a "young man who accepts new things very quickly", but he said that watching TV requires two remote controls to be exchanged, and every time his mother wants to watch TV, he has to adjust it first.
This year, he found that it was very difficult for him to change to a new TV. There were too many functions and he couldn't find what he wanted. To switch an interface, he had to change a remote control, and he had to wait for dozens of seconds of advertisements in between.
I can't find what I want for seven or eight minutes, "Turn it to maddening!"
In the survey, 49.6% could not find the program they wanted to watch, 28% had too many devices and did not know how to switch
Over the years, the problem of the difficulties encountered by the elderly in using intelligent electronic devices has attracted the attention of the government and society.
At the social level, some social organizations have carried out teaching on the use of smart electronic devices for the elderly.
For example, the "I will teach you how to use your mobile phone" project launched by Shell Public Welfare.
Since 2018, Shell Public Welfare has 450,000 volunteer brokers in more than 100 cities to help the elderly in the community learn smartphone-related functions by providing regular mobile phone training and store consultation services for the elderly in need in the community.
However, Beijing Youth Daily learned from Shell Public Welfare that they have no teaching content for the use of television for the elderly.
On the Internet, there are no public welfare projects that can teach the elderly to use TV.
Some netizens asked: How to teach the elderly to use TV?
The one with the most likes in the answer to the thread below is: read the manual.
China State Grid released a research report in February 2022 entitled "2022 Domestic Market Aging TV Research Report".
The report pointed out that when encountering difficulties, the respondents tended to ask their children, and some searched online for how to use it.
However, 27.2% of the respondents said they "just give up and don't watch it".
The survey report collected 1,191 survey samples, and the survey objects were age groups over 50 years old, mainly distributed in provincial capital cities, and half of the survey samples were from eastern and coastal first-tier cities.
Among the respondents, 12.8% said that the TV was not easy to operate, and another 2.8% thought it was "very difficult to operate".
Among the difficult options encountered in the process of using smart TVs, 49.6% of the respondents said that "the TV programs they want to watch cannot be directly accessed after turning on the smart TV", and the second and third options are "there are many devices that do not know how to switch between each other." ”, “The operation is complicated, I don’t know how to find the content I want to watch”, these two items accounted for 28% and 20.9% respectively.
Regarding the use of the remote control, "there are too many remote controls, I don't know which one to use", "I can't see the buttons of the remote control clearly", and "the remote control does not press or always presses the wrong way" is the top three.
Follow-up TV aging requirements have been released Voice control is the direction of improvement
In fact, the relevant departments also attach great importance to the problem of the elderly using TV Aging Technical Requirements", "Mobile Terminal Aging Test Method", "Smart TV Aging Design Technical Requirements" three group standards have been released.
This standard is to implement the "Notice on the Implementation Plan for Effectively Solving the Difficulties of the Elderly Using Intelligent Technology" issued by the General Office of the State Council.
At the meeting, representatives of terminal enterprises such as Huawei, Skyworth, OPPO, Xiaomi, vivo, and Honor jointly promised to strengthen the awareness of serving the elderly, carry out research and innovation on suitable technologies for the elderly, promote the implementation of suitable aging standards, and help the elderly to cross the digital divide.
In the "Technical Requirements for Smart TV Aging Design" (hereinafter referred to as "requirements"), it is required that the TV should use assistive technology or auxiliary functions in the simple mode to improve the convenience of the elderly to use the functions of the smart TV.
After the smart TV is powered on, the user should be allowed to choose whether to enter the easy mode or not.
At first power on, the user should be allowed to choose whether to enter the general mode or the simple mode.
"Requirements" pointed out that in the simple mode, clear voice, normal subtitles, screen magnification, etc. should be turned on by default, and the TV should support the adjustment function of font size.
In concise mode, icons and symbols should provide corresponding text titles.
The "requirements" are also clearly specified for the remote control.
The remote control suitable for the elderly should have clear and easy-to-recognize button labels, keep enough space between the buttons, the buttons should have a button tone, and the minimum contact surface of the buttons should not be less than 6 × 6 cm.
At the same time, the remote control should support one-handed operation, and the operation should generally be completed by a single button.
The most interesting point in the aforementioned research report by State Grid Corporation of China is that when asked what functions they want their TVs to have, 47.9% of the elderly chose a very smart answer—getting rid of the remote control, completely Control TV operations by voice.
It can be seen that the main reason for the troubles caused by smart TVs to the elderly is because of "not enough intelligence".
Lv Shenghua, editor-in-chief of China State Grid Corporation of China, told the Beijing Youth Daily that the original intention of the website to do this research was to see many children buying TVs for the elderly as New Year gifts before the Spring Festival, but found that the elderly would encounter many difficulties when using TVs.
When the website editors communicated, they also mentioned that their elders would encounter situations where they could not operate the TV.
Lv Shenghua believes that voice interaction should be a good solution, because voice communication can avoid difficulties for some elderly people with poor writing skills or low education.
Moreover, voice communication is very convenient. What the elderly want to watch can be found out loudly by the TV.
According to Lu Shenghua, there are already many mainstream companies in the market promoting voice interaction, which is a direction of the industry.
However, there will be some problems in speech recognition, such as some speech recognition rates are not high, local dialects, which still need TV manufacturers to continue to improve.
Text/Reporter Zhang Ziyuan, intern Dai Ruiyang Coordinator/Zhang Bin