My mother and her Simone — two years of daily real-world feedback

The tablet sits on a shelf, at eye level. To the right of the sofa, directly in line with the television. My mother can watch both at the same time. That positioning — that geographical obviousness in the living room — changed everything. Not the technology. The placement.

The Simone arrived in that living room in the summer of 2024, during the Paris Olympics — a few months after the first prototype was built, originally designed to support my father with Alzheimer's in his final months. At the time, he spent his evenings in front of the television, watching every event, staying up late. Good memories.

A presence in the living room

After my father passed away, I had one fear. Not that the tablet wouldn't work. That it wouldn't matter. That it would become another well-intentioned object left gathering dust in a corner.

That's not what happened.

My mother didn't adopt it because it's practical. She adopted it because it's there. Switched on, present, quiet and active at the same time. She says it feels like someone is sitting beside her. Not someone speaking. Just someone there.

That sentence stayed with me. It wasn't a feature I had planned for. It's what the tablet became — because it's well placed, because it doesn't switch off on its own, because it doesn't ask anything of her.

Surprises that do good

For two years now, we've been sending her photos without telling her. A picture from the weekend, a portrait of the grandchildren, a shot from a holiday. It appears on the tablet with no announcement, no notification. My mother discovers it by glancing at the screen.

Every time, there's surprise. And every time, joy. That ritual — which formed naturally within the family — has become one of the most important things about this project. Not an algorithm. Not an automated feed. People thinking of her, and showing it with a photo.

My mother can also send her own photos to her tablet. She uses the app from her phone, she uploads what she wants to see scrolling at home. Her name is Simone. The tablet carries her name. That's not by chance, and it's not incidental either.

What she actually uses

The radio, she doesn't use much. I had connected an external speaker for better sound quality. But for it to work, she needs to first switch on the speaker, then tap the radio button in the app. One step too many. She doesn't have the reflex. She hasn't asked about it either. The radio is there, available — just not part of her routine.

What she genuinely uses, without hesitation: the photos scrolling through. The weather, which she checks most mornings before going out. The time, shown at regular intervals throughout the day — not continuously, but often enough to serve as an anchor. And the news — headlines delivered through RSS feeds from France Télévisions.

The day broken into quarter-hours

I put a scheduling system in place. The idea: vary what's on screen throughout the day, without it becoming monotonous or overwhelming.

At the top of each hour, cinema news leads, then photos. At quarter past, the time and weather appear, followed by sports news, then photos again. At the half-hour, cultural headlines take over, then the photos return. At quarter to, the time and weather come back one last time before the next hour.

The time and weather therefore appear twice an hour — at quarter past and quarter to — a regular but unobtrusive anchor. Present often enough to be useful, rare enough not to intrude.

My mother doesn't analyse this rhythm. She doesn't know it exists. She simply sees that the screen changes, that it offers something new, that it doesn't freeze. And that is exactly what I wanted.

When the news weighs heavy

But general news headlines can weigh on you. My mother told me: some stories were making her anxious. The major headlines of the moment aren't always uplifting. You can't blame her for that.

So I changed the schedule. The top-of-hour content — the slot with the most prominence — is now cinema news. New releases, festivals, director interviews. Nothing anxiety-inducing. Positive things, curiosity, light culture.

She finds it more fitting. Her mood benefits from it. That change, apparently minor, taught me something important: the content on screen is never neutral. You are choosing what you put in someone's living room. That responsibility deserves to be taken seriously.

I also added a useful feature: a QR code appears alongside news items. She can point her phone at it to read the full article — to go further on a story that interests her, without typing anything.

To understand how all these features fit together throughout the day — photos, weather, news, radio — I've detailed what Simone sees and what runs behind the screen →

A bug. A lesson.

This is the part that's less comfortable to tell.

I had added the ability to delete photos from the app. My mother wanted to remove certain images — difficult moments, memories she no longer wanted to see scrolling past. She deleted them in the app. And they kept appearing on the tablet.

A bug. The deletion worked on the app side, but didn't propagate to the tablet. My mother said nothing to me. She didn't understand why the photos kept coming back. She simply started switching the tablet off.

That's how I realised something was wrong. I receive a notification on my iPhone when the screen is switched off. I could see she was turning it off in the mornings — a time that didn't match her usual habits. I called her. She explained. And I understood what had happened.

I made a full backup of all her photos before touching anything. Then I fixed the bug. Then I called to confirm everything was back in order.

Elderly people don't always complain. They find workarounds. They switch things off. They give up. And if you're not paying attention, you never know.

That screen-off notification — which I had set up almost as an afterthought — let me see something I would never have seen otherwise. It's not surveillance. It's a way of being present at a distance, without being intrusive.

This bug also reminded me how sensitive an elderly person is to the reliability of what you offer them. It's not fragility. It's consistency. If something doesn't work the way it's supposed to, she won't try to figure out why — she'll conclude that it doesn't work. And she'll be right.

Two years on

Since the bug was fixed, my mother has fully re-adopted the tablet. As if nothing had happened. As if she had simply been waiting for something that was hers to be returned to her.

A friend of hers came to visit one day at her flat. She saw the tablet. They talked about it. This woman also has children who live far away, like her. She found it remarkable — not as a gadget, but as a genuine answer to something she knows well.

My cleaner uses it too, in her own way. When she's cleaning, she switches on the radio. Simple, direct, no help needed. She listens to a comedy station. She has a good time, and it shows.

And I bought one for myself. An identical setup, with a Raspberry Pi, installed at home — initially to test new features without risking anything on my mother's device. But I use it every day now. The scrolling photos are mine, ours. Memories that surface. An energy I didn't expect. And when the screen goes dark in the evening, I understand exactly what my mother means: it leaves a void.

What this tablet is not

Two years of perspective allow you to say things plainly.

This tablet must not create stress. I've been asked more than once to add medication reminders. I understand the intention. But that's not what SimoneBox does, and it's not what it should do. A medication reminder is an obligation. It generates anxiety if you've missed it, if you're not sure you saw it. It turns an object of pleasure into an object of pressure.

My mother should not be afraid of her tablet. She should want to look at it.

This tablet exists for pleasure. For chosen information. For family presence across distance. Not to add another layer of management to a life that doesn't need more of that. The features that exist today are enough. They are essential. And their strength lies precisely in not doing too much.

That principle — not being intrusive, not creating anxiety, never adding weight — guides every decision on this project. And two years in, it feels more right than ever.

If you are in a similar situation, the SimoneBox survey was made for you.