Scenario 1 #
Imagine a regular family – Mum, Dad, a late teens daughter and 10 year old boy. The parents are both working, the daughter has just started higher education and is living away for the first time, while the boy attends school and gets the school bus every day. There is a grandfather from the mother’s side of the family, and a grandmother from the father’s side, who both live alone, some distance away.
In the above scenario, there are six people in a close family unit, although three of them are living apart. The Mum and Dad will inevitably worry about the other four, for different reasons; health and aging for the grandparents, how their daughter is coping with a new situation, and a myriad of little things for their son, from him getting to school and back every day, to his grades, to worrying that his smart mouth will get him in trouble, and so on. The daughter also worries, but is completely swept up in her studies and new friends, as she should be, while the son, bless him, is only really worried about whether he can stay up late to watch the game. The grandparents just want to know that everyone is OK.
So how can SentLive help them? If they all sign up for the Free Starter plan, it might work out something like this: The Mum, Dad, daughter and son will form a Crew together, with a Loop that contains the whole family. They can set timed daily or weekly checks on themselves and/or the others, so for example the parents can set regular Checks on their son for when he is meant to have arrived at school, and for when he gets home from school (if they are not normally at home themselves), and he will get a message asking ‘Are you OK?’ and with a simple tap he lets everyone know he is safe; or if he is not, he lets everyone know that AND where he is, without anyone nearby realising. The grandparents can both regularly check in on the Loop, to let everyone know they are fine. For the daughter in this situation where there is never enough time to call her parents, or something else just ‘came up’, an unobtrusive instant check and an easy tap makes her feel less guilty and the parents (and grandparents) less worried. And she can post the photos of her new boyfriend on the The Buzz stream! Or maybe not…
Scenario 2 #
Now we have a 30 year old single man, who has a very active social life, but lives alone in a rented apartment. He travels extensively for work and leisure, both domestically and abroad. He has an older married sister, and his parents are close to retirement age.
An independent man, his married sister and healthy retiring parents – how can SentLive be of use to them?
However old and successful they may be, parents will always worry about their children, and in this scenario the regular travelling would add to their concerns, even though they probably never voice them. Foreign countries that drive on the wrong side, have poor health care, dirty food and places that have a bad press for foreigners being mugged? With SentLive in hand, as long as the internet isn’t as dodgy as the cuisine, they can get regular reassurance that he has avoided any potential hazards; and if he does find himself in some trouble there is a way to get the word out without the ‘trouble’ knowing he has done so.
Maybe the parents decide to go on the trip of lifetime – you can guarantee their daughter will have some palpitations when they announce they are going to Colombia then Amsterdam! She can set one off and regular scheduled checks for them to respond to, so they won’t forget even with the jet lag and time differences. A check an hour after they land and then one every night before bed. No intrusion on their fun, and peace of mind all round. And some pictures of them trying space cakes?!!
But what if… #
….somebody can’t respond? A check is sent asking ‘Are you OK?’, but something has happened: maybe they got separated from their device, or the battery is dead, or something bad has happened? This is where SentLive’s No Response feature comes into play; when setting Checks, on the form there is a section named ‘No Response Delay’, where the person setting the check, whether it is on themselves or on someone else, has a choice of four options to select in the event that there has been neither a CALM nor a Signal response following the check; the choices are whether to have an automatic No Response Alert posted after either 15, 30 or 60 minutes from the time of the check, or never to post one. A No Response Alert is very similar to the Signal Alert in that it will be posted on the The Buzz stream, and there will be both an internal notification, and notifications to Crew, or Loop connections who have subscribed to them; the major difference is that there is no location information as SentLive does not ‘track’ members, but only saves the last location when a CALM or Signal Alert was sent. This is not a bug, it is a feature, as we believe in the privacy of our members, so the decision whether or not to reveal your location is always in your hands. What your connections do as a consequence of a No Response Alert (or, indeed, a Signal Alert) is up to them, but at the very least they will be aware that something might be, or is, wrong.
