Cloudina

Do you also think a smartphone is too complicated for people with intellectual challenges? Not true!

Do you need support in performing your daily activities? Do you forget your appointments? Is making phone calls a challenge for you? Do you have problems asking other people to help you?

Sometimes you forget things? See how Cloudina apps can help you.

About Cloudina

Cloudina is specially developed for people with reduced independency. It is a series of apps supporting the user to carry out daily activities which seem easy to most of us. With the help of a career or professional coach and through a management website, Cloudina can be tailored according to the needs of the individual user.

Tailor-made

The user puts his/her own Cloudina together from the apps that are useful to him/her. Cloudina evolves with its owner. According to the needs of the user apps can be added or removed. Through the available settings on the management website AND on each individual app the use of Cloudina can be fine-tuned. For example: free choice of pictures, font size, alternative time indication.

Cloud-based

Cloudina is Cloud-based! All the information is transferred wirelessly, through the cloud, back and forth between the management website and Cloudina. This makes using and programming of Cloudina easier for both the user and the coach. Cloudina can be programmed even if the user is abroad! You only need a PC with internet connection.

User friendly

Each app is linear, meaning there is only one level and so the user does not get lost or confused in any tree structure.
The information cannot be erased or altered on the smartphone itself making the app easier to use. More importantly, pushing the "wrong" button has no negative consequences for the user.
In addition, the career or professional coach needs no special computer experience or training to be able to use the management website.

Benefits for the user

Travelling independently
The BlueAssist encourages the client to connect with others and ask for help. Despite months of training Sofie, one of the clients of Ithaka, could not learn where to get off the bus. In a system where one is always told what to do, one loses any sense of taking initiatives and does not even remember things. Don’t you have problems remembering how to drive to a destination since you are using a GPS?! Using BlueAssist and asking the bus driver to give her a sign when they reached the right bus stop, she learned it. Now she is taking the bus by her own going from her house to the day care center and from there to all the other places she must go for her daily activities.

Hans, another Cloudina user, takes the train from Ostend to Leuven over a distance of about 150 km (90 miles).
They are now more independent and do not have to wait till someone is available to accompany them during their travel.

Better integration in the society

Sofie, Hans and other users of Cloudina are now more often in the streets of their and other cities. They are now visibly part of their community. The more not-disabled people see people with disabilities in the streets, the more they get used to it and the better know how to treat and help them if they have a question. The society becomes more and more inclusive.

Peace of mind and better day structure
People who cannot read the clock don’t know when they must do something or go somewhere. As a result many of them just miss their appointments. Other gets nervous and ask others all the time if it was time for them to get ready. The time indication of the Cloudina app by means of blocks makes it clear for the users whether or not the appointment is about to start. It warns the users when the time is reached. This gives the users peace of mind and avoids tension with others.

More self-confidence

It can happen that a client gets lost or thinks that he/she is lost and doesn’t know what to do. The easy-to-use Telephone app of Cloudina enables the users to call the coach and ask for help. If the users cannot explain where they are at that moment, they can send their GPS location to the coach by tapping the Globe button on their phone. If in a stress situation they don’t manage to do that, the coach can take initiative and locate the client. Being able to call for help and knowing that they can always be found gives the clients more confidence and courage to go out by themselves.
(In order to be able to locate a client, the coach should have permission which is set in our system).

More independence

Many clients can only perform a task when they have a step by step plan. Some need to be reminded what they were supposed to do. Pictures of the activities can be saved in separate albums of the Cloudina Album app. The users can consult those albums if they need support in doing their task. Some Cloudina users have a job or do their own shopping independently using those albums.

Greater self-esteem

Many people with intellectual disabilities have been told for years that they could not do anything by themselves and that they always needed somebody to guide them all the time. In many cases Cloudina has proven that not to be true. With a little bit of technological support and some belief in their ability they are capable of doing many things. Cloudina has offered its users a much higher self-esteem and a better quality of life.

Benefits for the coach/organization

More quality time
Because the clients become more independent and learn how to do things on their own a lot of time is saved. Instead of walking in the streets or sitting in a bus, the coach is back in the organization without any stress and has time to spend quality time with those clients who need it. One of the basic ideas of Cloudina and BlueAssist is that support is available at all time, but is offered when it is needed.

Support more clients

During the time that no help is required, the coach can do other things. It has been proven in Ithaka, the day care center where the idea of Cloudina and BlueAssist has been born, that the same number of staff can support more clients. Ithaka has realized an increase of capacity by more than 50%.

More flexibility

In most day care centers and other programs activities are organized collectively. A supervisor makes sure that a group of clients do an activity. The organization has a big problem if a supervisor calls in sick, for example. If the clients do activities outside the organization individually, this situation is not necessarily a problem. Besides, other coaches have time to stand in for their colleague. Even if some new appointments need to be programmed other coaches can do it very fast.

Lower accommodation costs

If a client wants or needs to do something outside the walls of the organization, somebody has to accompany him/her. You probably recognize the situation. What if the client could go outside alone? How much money does that save you? It is proven that Cloudina can help many people to do that.

The coach can support the client remotely. New appointments, phone numbers, pictures, BlueAssist messages are added on a management website. The smartphone of the client is updated through the cloud automatically. The users can receive new instructions even if they are not inside the organization.

No need any more to write a new appointment in the calendar of the client or stick new pictures in his/her album. Everything is done through the PC, much faster and cheaper.

Applications

At present Cloudina consists of 4 apps that have been created in response to demands from the work field. They are:

Calendar
BlueAssist
Telephone
Photo album

Calendar

How does it work?

During development the Calendar app has been continuously tested by many users with challenges associated with cognition. The result is an easy to use calendar with different options that make it accessible for a large number of users.

The appointments (each shown as a picture) and the description of the activity appear as a list on the display which the user can scroll through easily. By tapping on an appointment the details of that appointment are shown on a new display where the date, the start time and the end time of the appointment are shown. There is also an indication of the time left until the start of the appointment for individuals who cannot read the hour. By touching the display the user goes back to the list of the appointments.

When the start time of an appointment is reached, the smartphone starts to ring and the appointment appears on the display. By pressing the Confirm button on the screen, the user can stop the ringing. At the same time the system registers that the user has confirmed the appointment and the coach will NOT be notified. If the user does not confirm the appointment, the coach gets a warning. This feature is very important, for example when the user must take some medicines and the coach/career wants to be sure that he/she has remembered it.

Some of the available options:

Showing the appointments of today and tomorrow or the next seven days.
Showing icons for days
Showing day names
Choosing alarm sound
Changing the size of each item
Changing the font size
Protecting the settings by a pin code

BlueAssist

BlueAssist is a social innovative idea and a logo. By showing this logo to passers-by, the fellow citizens recognize that the user of the logo needs help. It gives confidence to the user to ask for help and to the fellow citizen to offer help. This logo has been widely used, helping many users to go shopping, take buses/trains and do other daily activities more independently. The coach together with the user adds messages and pictures/symbols in the app with regards to the possible problems that the user may encounter when he/she goes out on his own. For instance:

If the user is going to take the metro, a BlueAssist message can be added: Hello, I need to get off the metro at Waterloo station. Could you please give me a sign when we get there, please? Thank you”.

On each page there is a Call button next to the message. If the passer-by cannot help, he/she can push the call button and get in touch with the coach of the user. They can then consult the coach and find a solution for the situation. Using a smartphone as carrier for the BlueAssist messages (comparing to BlueAssist card) has the advantage that the helper does not need to have a smartphone to access help for the user.

Several users have learned how to use public transport on their own using this logo and messages.
You can also add a general call for help in case the user is confused. Something like:

“Hi, My name is Peter. I’m confused and don’t know what to do. Please push the green Call button to call my coach. Thank you”.

Some of the available options
Browsing through the BlueAssist messages with buttons instead of swiping Changing the font size Protecting the settings with a pin code -Telephone The telephone app has two functions:

1) Making it easy to make phone calls. For each contact person a photo can be added. If there are less than 9 contact people, each one can be shown in a tile form. The user taps on a picture and the number of that person is dialed. If there are more than 9 contact persons, each of them is shown in a separate display. The user can then scroll through the telephone book.

2) This app can also be used to locate the user to the contact. On the page of each contact person an optional globe can be added. By tapping on this button, the GPS coordinates of the user (and the current address if it can determined) are sent to the contact person. Alternatively, those contact persons who have permission from the user can send the text message “get location” to the users’ smartphone. The smartphone sends its GPS coordinates automatically back to the sender. This is useful if the user is not able to push on the globe.

Some of the available options

Choosing if the phone number is displayed or not Browsing through the telephone book using buttons instead of swiping Showing the contacts in a tile form or one contact per page Changing the font size Protecting the settings with a pin code -Photo album Many people with cognitive challenges cannot talk about the things they have done during the day or they may struggle to communicate about themselves when they are talking to “strangers”. The Photo app therefore has two functions:

1) A very easy to use camera function. After activating the camera function, the user can take pictures by tapping on the display. These photos are then automatically saved in an album. By accessing this album the user can then talk about his/her activities on that day.

The pictures are also automatically sent to the management website. These photos can additionally be used in the telephone book or for appointments.

2) The coach/career can add pictures to several albums on the smartphone such as family, friends, pets, etc. The user can open those albums and talk about the subject more easily by looking at the pictures.

Another useful application of the photo album is when a user must do a task, but may need some support. A picture of each step of the task can be saved in an album that the user can consult if he/she does not know or is not sure what to do.

Some of the available functions

Browsing through the pictures using buttons instead of swiping Changing the font size Protecting the settings with a pin code - Email us to receive a free 30 day trial.

SKU: Cloudina - Lifetime subscription

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