SimplicityBy callowschoolboy for I-nspire

I think the two most important things this product will need are simplicity and communication.  It will need to be simple and easy to use because many of the users will either have low digital literacy or be physically impaired in their use of computers.  To help with the latter constraint, I believe speech recognition (see Exonoice's redesign) is essential, and much more feasible than touch screens, which still cost a great deal.  Tech savvy people who are in hospital will simply do what they always do, perhaps from their own laptop, but this product needs to fit the needs of those who aren't already accustomed to computers by being extremely easy to use, just by using  a very simple design.  Low literacy users (LLUs just for convenience) don't need access to any of the options and features that are normally so important in programs and applications today, they just need particular functionality, like making a call.
  Which brings us to the meat of this software solution: communication.  Being able to easily communicate with their family and friends outside will do the most towards making a user's stay in hospital more enjoyable, particularly being able to video-conference (see Jinny's redesign).  You won't need to write a complicated program, Skype has enabled online videoconferencing on PCs for years so you just need to interface with it.  Some LLUs will need Skype's already easy interface to be further simplified, for instance not ringing to see if you want to take the call, because probably the user won't be getting a lot of calls or certainly it won't be an interruption.
  Finally, you could have a few games.  Some games would actually help people recover, for instance if someone's had a stroke then a memory game is perfect, such as the card matching game that children love to play.  And a brief look at kadokado.com will convince anyone that games don't have to be complicated or revolutionary to be fun, that site has a very interesting version of Minesweeper, and an exciting and challenging sidescroller as well as many puzzle games. 
  I'm envisioning something that manages a few important activities from a laptop for the user's convenience.  It would manage any newspaper subscriptions the hospital has and a small library of books, mostly public domain, in a Reading section; it would allow the user, even an LLU, to make and receive video calls using Skype, it would provide a few games in a Games section, and might have a simple scheduler so the user could keep up with a few events like planned visits, when the nurse will come to do physical therapy, or just their favorite TV show.  All of this with voice activation will really improve the patients stay.

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