Family Needs User Guide

The first time

1. Choose your language

The app opens on ten languages, each written in itself. The whole screen changes as you press one, and Arabic and Urdu turn the app right-to-left. Press Continue when it is the one you read. You can change it later with Change language.

2. A short introduction

Three illustrated pages: tapping pictures and the shared household list; everyone reading their own language and joining by QR code; and caring for each other with medicine times and asking for help. Use Next and Back, or Skip introduction. You can see it again any time with See how it works.

3. Get started

4. Choose or set up your home

After signing in, the app lists the homes your account belongs to (Which home is this phone for?), each saying who you are in it. Tap one and it comes down to this phone. If your account has no home yet, or you want another, press Set up a new home and answer four short questions:

1. Where is your home? Shops differ from country to country, and this decides what appears in the picture grid. You can skip it — skipping shows everything.
2. What is your home called, and what is your name? Both are required: a request has to be attributable to somebody.
3. The language for the shopping list you send out. It starts as yours; change it if the person who does the shopping reads another.
4. Your information, and about the medicine features. Where your information lives, and what the medicine features are and are not. Tick I understand, then press Start.

You are now the home's Owner — the one who adds everybody else — and the home is linked to the Family Needs service, so every phone you add will see the same thing.

Joining with a code

1. Ask whoever runs the home to open Family, choose your card and press Show code.
2. On your phone, open Family Needs and choose Someone gave me a code.
3. Press Scan with the camera and point it at the code. If the camera cannot read it, type the code in the box underneath and press Join.

That is all: You are in. This phone is yours now. The app knows who you are and never asks you to sign in. A code works once and lasts ten minutes; if it has expired, ask for a new one. If the phone joined but had no connection, press Finish joining when it is back online.

Adding somebody to your home

Open Family → Add a person and fill in:

• Name, and a photograph if you like.
• What they can do — their role (see People and roles).
• Language they read, text size (Normal, Large or Very large), and whether to read names out loud.
• Simple screen — on by default for a helper or a child, off for an adult or owner. You can see the choice and change it while adding them.

When they have a phone of their own, open their card and press Show code. A large code appears for them to scan; when it is used, the app says their phone has joined. Press New code for another.

Family → Phones lists every phone this home is used on, with when each was last seen. Remove this phone signs it out of the home at once. A person can be removed from the app, and brought back later, from their card.

Saying what the house needs

Tap the big button on the home screen, choose a shelf, and tap a picture. That is the whole thing.

• Tap again on the same picture to ask for more of it. The number on the tile goes up.
• The switch above the pictures says what a tap means: Running low or All finished. It starts on running low.
• If the person's settings have Read names out loud on, the app says each item's name in their language as it is tapped — useful for a child who cannot read yet, or tired eyes.
• Find something searches every language an item is named in, not only yours.
• The row of shortcuts on the home screen is what you ask for most, worked out from your own history.

Pressed it by mistake?

Once something is on the list, its picture grows three small buttons:

The house keeps one request per thing, not one per person. If somebody already asked for the milk, your tap adds to theirs and the app says whose request it joined. You can always take back a request you started; reducing somebody else's is for an adult or the owner.

Reading the list

Needed shows what the house needs, always in your own language whoever asked for it, with their face beside each row.

• I have seen it tells whoever asked that somebody knows.
• Bought takes it off the list. Tapped by mistake? Open Already bought and press Put back on the list — it keeps who asked.
• Not needed withdraws a request. Anyone may withdraw their own; only an adult or the owner may withdraw somebody else's.

Sending the list to a phone

1. Press Send on the list.
2. Choose the language it should be written in — the home's own language is already selected.
3. Read what is about to go, and send it through whichever messaging app the family already uses.

The person receiving it does not need Family Needs: they get a plain list in their language.

What each person sees

Nobody has to set this up. The home screen shapes itself around what each person actually does.

The simple screen

For anyone who would rather have a few buttons than a whole app — an elderly parent, a young child, somebody who has not used a phone much. Turn it on for them in Family, on their card.

They get Tap what the house needs, I need help, what they asked for, and their own medicine. There is no bar along the bottom — just a large arrow in the top corner to get back from anywhere — and the small gear beside their name opens their own settings and nothing more.

It changes nothing about what they are allowed to do; that is their role, set separately. Turning it off is done from your phone, on their card in Family.

Asking the house for help

Press the waving hand (Help), then press the picture that matches what is happening:

• Please come to me — nothing is wrong exactly; come here.
• I do not feel well — ill, dizzy, in pain.
• I have fallen
• Something is wrong in the house — water, smoke, a smell, somebody at the door.

There is no "are you sure?". The moment you press, every screen in the home shows your face and what you said, and it stays there until somebody deals with it.

The phones sound an alarm

Every other phone in the home rings at alarm volume and shows who is asking and what they said. The phone that pressed the button stays quiet. Phones whose app is closed ring too when the service has push delivery set up; the help screen tells you which is true — that every phone rings even with the app closed, or that a phone hears the call when its app is open or next opened. A phone that is switched off, has no signal, or has notifications turned off for Family Needs does not ring; the help screen says so when it is this phone and offers the way to turn them on.

If you belong to more than one home, a call ringing in another of your homes is shown with a way to go to it. Past calls are kept under Earlier calls for help.

Medicine

Setting a medicine up

An adult or the owner presses Add a medicine and chooses who takes it, how many each time and in what unit (tablets, capsules, drops, ml, puffs, sachets, spoons or injections), the times of day — or none, for a medicine taken when needed — when it starts and ends, how many are in the house, and when to add it to the shopping list.

Every day

Each medicine shows whose it is, how much is one dose, and today's times as small chips: later, due now, missed, or accounted for.

• I took it records the dose and takes it out of the count at home.
• I did not take it records that too — the app stops asking and nothing leaves the box.
• For a medicine taken when needed, Take one now records a dose any number of times a day.
• Change this medicine edits the dose, times, dates and refill point. Which medicine and whose it is cannot be changed, because doses have been recorded against them — start a new one instead.
• Stop this medicine ends a course without deleting it; everything recorded stays, and Start it again puts it back.
• When the count reaches the level set for it, the medicine puts itself on the shopping list, marked as a medicine refill.
• After a shop, count what is actually in the cupboard and enter it — the app never guesses this from a purchase.

A child or an elderly person sees their own card and the one button on it; somebody who may see everyone's medicine can switch between My medicine and Everyone's medicine.

Reminders

The first time somebody sets a medicine up, the phone asks whether Family Needs may send notifications. Say yes and it says when a dose is due — on the lock screen, whether or not the app is open, in the language of whoever the phone belongs to. A device the whole family shares reminds for everybody in the house; a phone that is one person's reminds only them.

• A phone that is off, out of battery, or has notifications turned off says nothing.
• It only knows what somebody tapped. If a dose was taken and nobody pressed I took it, the reminder still arrives.
• It holds about a week of reminders and replaces them whenever the app is opened; a phone nobody opens for longer than that goes quiet until somebody does.
• On Android, reminders can arrive a few minutes late until the phone is allowed to keep exact times; the medicine screen offers Allow exact times.
• The Windows version does not remind.

Medicine times follow the home's clock (Settings → Time zone), so eight o'clock at home is eight o'clock on every phone in it, wherever the phone is. Until the home has a time zone, each phone reminds on its own clock.

People and roles

Language, text size, spoken names and the simple screen belong to the person, not the phone. Anybody may change their own, and it follows them to whichever phone they use next. Making text bigger takes no rights away.

One phone is one person. Once a home is on the service, whoever holds a phone is whoever that phone was set up as — which is what makes it safe to hand to a child. A shared tablet is set up as whoever will use it most, and a second phone gets its own code.

A home kept on one phone

A home that was made on a phone and has not been linked stays on that phone. Everybody in it shares the phone and says who they are when they pick it up (Who are you?, or Not you? Change person). On such a phone anybody can put a four-digit PIN on their own profile in Settings → Lock my profile:

• The PIN is asked for when the profile is picked, when the app starts, and when the app comes back after a minute or more out of sight. The owner is asked again before managing people, changing the home's settings, linking or deleting the home, unless they gave it in the last five minutes.
• Five wrong tries in a row make the next one wait, starting at half a minute and growing each time.
• Forgotten it? Press Forgot PIN? and unlock the way you unlock the phone — fingerprint, face or the phone's own PIN. The owner can also take the PIN off anybody's profile from Family.
• PINs are kept only on the phone, never on the service, and are forgotten when the home is linked.

The owner links such a home with Link up the family. From then on every phone in the family sees the same list, the same medicine and the same calls for help, and everybody else joins with a code.

Adding your own things

Open Things from the menu. Press Add a new thing for anything the app does not already know about: take a photo of the actual package or choose a picture, and name it in whichever languages your home uses — one is enough. A name in only one language is shown to everybody else with a note saying which language it is in, rather than being left blank or guessed.

Anything the house never buys can be hidden so the picture grid stays short. It is hidden, not deleted, and Show hidden things brings it back. Things appears only for somebody who may change the list, and never on the simple screen.

Country and brands

Settings → Country decides which of the items Family Needs ships appear in your picture grid — some items are not offered in some regions, and a few regional staples show only where they are sold. Countries are listed with their flag and their own name. If yours is not on the list, leave it unset: you will see everything, and you can hide what you do not want.

In some places a household asks for a particular brand rather than "milk", so the catalog also carries the brands people actually name there — in Kuwait, for example — listed as the varieties people ask for, such as a juice's flavour or full-fat against low-fat milk. The plain item always comes first, so nobody has to pick a brand to say what they need.

Brands ship as drawings in each pack's own colours, not as photographs of the real packages. Whoever runs the service can add real photographs from the administration site, and every phone picks them up without an app update. Anything you add yourself always appears, wherever you are.

Settings at a glance

Leaving and deleting

An account can also be deleted without opening the app: go to familyneed.thetechidea.app/account/delete, sign in as yourself, tick that you understand what is deleted, and press Delete my account. No administrator is involved. An account that administers the service must first have its administrator role removed by another administrator.