While an Amazon Echo Show provides a great deal of useful information to you, it may be overwhelming to your loved one. In this article, I’ll suggest some best practices for keeping your loved one informed while reducing confusion.
For example, while they find the rotational information display of time and weather useful, your loved one may find the display upcoming calendar events such as “Lunch Time”, that is one hour away, very confusing!
Echo Show Informational Features
Here are the informational features available at the time of this writing. Please note that their functions may change as Amazon makes improvements:
Rotational information display
Calendar event notifications
Announcements
Reminders
Notifications
You may notice that I left “Alarms & Timers” out of this list. While you may find them very useful, some loved ones get startled by their overwhelming persistence and have difficulty turning them off. I had one older friend call me in a panic because “Alexa wouldn’t stop beeping” at him, and he didn’t know how to turn the alarm off.
You can also provide time-driven or event-driven information such as a daily reminder to exercise through Alexa Routines, as described in this article.
Rotational Information Display
This is the display of continuous cycling of information that Amazon preset for you when first set up your Echo Show. In my article on setting up your loved one’s Echo Show, I made some suggestions for turning most of these off. I suggest these specific settings, if your loved one is easily confused:
Swipe down from the top of the screen
Tap settings
Tap Home Content
All settings OFF except for:
Notifications
Shared with You
Weather Alerts
Weather Forecasts
Rotate Continuously
Note that “Calendar Events” and “Reminders” were not included in this list because of the potential confusion with the display of upcoming events versus current information.
Calendar Events Notification
If you have access to your loved one’s calendar, you can add events. Their Echo Show will speak the calendar event information at the time of the event through a calendar setting in the Alexa app. If you also add additional notifications (alerts) as a pre-reminder of an upcoming event, note that there is a problem as their Echo Show will only speak the first reminder. However, you can make the Echo Show speak additional pre-reminders through Alexa Routines.
There will be a future article on creating calendar events as they are beneficial as notification of events such as family video calls.
Announcements
If your loved one has more than one Echo device, announcements become very useful in that they can speak a message throughout all devices. They can be programmed through Alexa Routines and will be covered in the upcoming calendar event article.
Reminders
Reminders have a feature that may be useful for your loved one, but should be used with caution. They differ in that they require your loved one to “dismiss” them either by touch the screen or saying, “Alexa, dismiss reminder”. They should only be used if you want your loved one to confirm the message. You can set a reminder through your loved one’s Alexa account as follows:
Tap More
Tap Reminders
Tap Add Reminder
Note that you can pick “All Devices,” which will help ensure that your loved one will hear the message.
Notifications
Calendar events and Alexa Routines can use Notifications to get your loved one’s attention. Notifications include a sound and a verbal description of the Notification and are repeated twice.
*Disclosure: The research and opinions in this article are those of the author, and may or may not reflect the official views of Tech-enhanced Life.
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Retired Intel Engineer wanting to share DIY technology tips for the children of parents wanting to remain living independently. I like posting ideas and answering technical questions. If a product or software has an issue making it hard for seniors to use, I try to offer workarounds and also try to contact the manufacturer for solutions. I write a column for this website in the Innovation- Homebrew Solutions & Ideas section
