We built the interviewer we wished our own families had.

Why this exists

Everyone means to do this. Almost nobody does. The reason is not that families don’t care - it is that sitting down with a parent, a recorder, and a blank piece of paper is genuinely hard. You do not know what to ask. The obvious questions produce the stories you have heard a hundred times. And the moment the recording starts, everybody becomes strangely formal.

Then something changes - an illness, a move, a fall - and the project that was always going to happen next summer becomes urgent, or impossible.

We watched that pattern for years before we built anything. What was missing was never a recording device; every phone is one. What was missing was the interviewer: somebody patient who knows what to ask second.

Who we are

MyLifeMemoir is made by Senior Care Resources, with offices in McKeesport, PA and Bonita Springs, FL. Our work has long been with older adults and their families - which is why this product is built the way it is, and why we argue about type sizes and tap targets more than most software companies do.

Our other products:

• MyLifeFolio - the practical companion to this one: the documents, accounts and instructions a family needs to find.
• Medicaid in a Minute

What we believe about this

• The storyteller is the author. Software should ask, listen and organise. It should not decide what mattered in somebody’s life.
• The voice is the artefact. A transcript is useful. A recording of the person telling it is irreplaceable, and it costs the storyteller nothing extra - they were only ever talking.
• Design for eighty, not for twenty-five. Large type, spoken questions, forgiving controls, and no step where a mistake costs you anything.
• Warmth beats sophistication. Nobody has ever wanted to tell their life story to an impressive piece of technology.

A word about the tone

You will notice that we avoid the language of urgency and loss. It would probably sell more memberships - it certainly performs well in advertising - but it makes for a poor first conversation with a parent, and it is not the spirit in which anybody should sit down to tell their story. This is about preservation, discovery and connection. The other thing takes care of itself.