K4Community Plus

My parents live in a retirement community. Both are 85+ years old. I am here visiting and was asked to help them install this app so that they could reserve a table for meals in the dining hall. They have an older iPad mini, but the operating system is too old to install the app. It requires iOS 13. The iPad mini’s OS is up-to-date at 12.5.7. My dad also has an older computer. We signed up to use the app, but we get the spinning ball, and no ability to use its functions, probably because the processor is too old or it doesn’t have enough memory. My dad also has an android smart phone with an older operating system. Unfortunately the app requires a newer operating system than my dad has on his phone. He cannot update the system software anymore and therefore cannot use the app on his phone. Frustrating! It seems strange to me that a retirement community that takes care of seniors would require a high-tech solution to reserve a table for a meal in the dining hall. And it seems unrealistic to expect that seniors are always going to have the latest high tech equipment.

This is, perhaps the worst user interface I’ve ever seen on an app that is geared toward the elderly. It does not follow Apple‘s accessibility guidelines. Even if you increase the font size in iOS under accessibility, the K4 connect app will not honor that accessibility font size setting in the app. Specifically, the navigation menu text remains tiny. This is particularly bad because there are no easy to understand icons that could make the menu and landing points easier to navigate. Ifyou have less than perfect eyesight and mobility in your hands, hello, the elderly!, then the lack of icons is really a negative. Even if you can find the correct area you seek in the app, the information is not very usable frequently because the facility is very bad at adding in the contextual information required. The graphics in K4 are poorly designed lacking in contrast and difficult to read. I don’t know if this is a function of the K4 connect group or if it’s the facility that is providing the poor graphics. Previously the facility used an app called Touch Town. The residents liked it and it was very easy for them to use. However, it did not have a human resources software component for the facility. I suspect that is much more useful and valuable to the facility then any benefit they see for the residents. It allows the facility to manage their human resources using K4 software and decrease their human resources staff because K4 connect provides these services. I would definitely not recommend this app to any facility that serves the elderly. In general the residents hate it.

The new update may look better but bugs related to events were introduced. Old events persist. Load more may load events too far ahead. Have to restart app & use a filter for events then clear the filter to get to current events. Way too hard for many residents to figure out how to get the current events. Fix this asap.

Often freezes and must be installed. Out of date items don’t disappear but should. Should work on desktop And laptop computers but doesn’t. Many residents and families need accessibility on multiple computers. Still freezing (11/2/22). Really annoying. Easily the worst performing app I’ve had since apps first became available!