Daysome

Daysome shows one person, on one screen, 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.

The display is 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 their favourite programme is on. They reaches for it all day long, so that is where the answer lives.

WHAT IS ON THE SCREEN FOR THE FAMILY MEMBER

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. The menu for each meal. Weekly visitors — the cleaner, the shopping delivery — on the days they actually come. And an optional note from the family, which takes itself down when it stops being true.

Optionally, Daysome makes a soft chime when something starts and it says how much time there is. “Half an hour until tea” — in quarters and halves, the way a person says it, never “34 minutes”.

WHAT IT NEVER DOES

It never says anything has been missed. 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 has no adverts, no streaks and no scores.

FOR THE FAMILY

A private code that you set 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 the display and puts itself away after a while untouched, so a device left mid-change goes back to showing the 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 the devicee's own settings. Words instead of symbols throughout — an icon somebody cannot interpret is worse than nothing on the screen.

It works with no internet connection, and does not require a subscription.

Daysome is an app centred on 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.