A 16-year-old Boca Raton student taught herself to build an app after watching her grandfather struggle to navigate ordinary online games as his Alzheimer's disease progressed. Morgan Cole named the result Howie's Place, after her grandfather Howie, who loved classic word and math games and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2018. The free app strips out pop-ups, timers, and other distractions that made mainstream brain-game apps too frustrating for him to use.
Cole told CBS12 that Howie's Place was created as a space where people facing similar situations could play games without excess complications. Apple's App Store lists the app as a free iOS release from HOWIES PLACE CLASSIC GAMES LLC, copyrighted by Cole, featuring six classic brain games. Users of the app now range from people with Alzheimer's and traumatic brain injuries to people with special needs and children, spanning ages well beyond the seniors Cole originally had in mind.
A Design Built Around What Frustrated Her Grandfather
The choice to cut ads, timers, and multi-layered menus was not cosmetic. Design research on digital tools for people with cognitive impairment has found that pop-up advertisements, strict timers, and complicated navigation disproportionately cause frustration and app abandonment among users experiencing executive function decline, according to GoodRx. For Cole's grandfather, those same features had turned simple games into an ordeal as his disease advanced, according to the CBS12 report.
Cole said her grandfather would have been proud of Howie's Place, per the same report — though he passed away before seeing how many lives the app would touch. One current user, an 84-year-old woman named Charlotte, said the app helps keep her mind working and gives her a constructive activity, CBS12 reported.
Reaching Families Through B'nai Torah's TLC Program
Cole volunteers with B'nai Torah Congregation's Tzedakah, Learning and Chesed (TLC) Program, where she connected with Summer Faerman, the program's director, who is now helping share the app with more families in the community. The B'nai Torah Congregation is recognized as the largest Conservative synagogue in the Southeastern United States, and its TLC Program, created in 2012, organizes community service and elder care initiatives across South Florida. Before building the app, Cole was already known for academic initiative at Pine Crest School in Boca Raton, where she and a teammate placed in the top three globally in the Pine Crest School ClimateScience Olympiad in October 2024.
The need for accessible tools like Howie's Place is significant in Palm Beach County, where an estimated 13.8% of residents 65 and older — roughly 51,600 seniors — live with Alzheimer's disease, ranking the county fourth highest in the state for senior prevalence, according to 2023 data compiled by Stacker. Statewide, Florida has about 580,000 seniors living with Alzheimer's, supported by 877,000 unpaid family caregivers who contribute an estimated 1.4 billion hours of care annually, valued at $30.3 billion, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
Science Backs Cognitive Engagement, With Caveats
There is research supporting the value of targeted cognitive activity for older adults. A 20-year follow-up from the NIH-funded ACTIVE trial, published in 2026 in Alzheimer's & Dementia, found that older adults who completed speed-of-processing brain training had a 25% lower incidence of dementia over two decades compared with control groups, according to UF Health. Still, the National Institute on Aging cautions that generic commercial brain apps lack clinical proof they can prevent or reverse dementia, even though mentally engaging activities can help build cognitive reserve and foster social connection in seniors.
That distinction matters against the financial backdrop of the disease. Alzheimer's costs Florida's Medicaid program nearly $3.9 billion annually, per the Alzheimer's Association, while FDA-approved disease-modifying drugs such as lecanemab carry an annual price tag of $26,500 before Medicare reimbursement adjustments, Stacker reported. Howie's Place, by contrast, can be downloaded for free by searching for it in an app store.
Cole said she hopes to help as many people as possible with the app that carries her grandfather's name. For now, it continues to reach new households through word of mouth and community programs like B'nai Torah's TLC initiative, giving families across Boca Raton a simple, ad-free way to keep loved ones engaged.
