Ageing?
- Apr 19, 2024
- 4 min read
We are all afraid of it. Ageing. The word sends shivers down your spine. However, it is a real problem for populations in many developed countries. I know this personally from living in Scotland my whole life where an ageing population has dominated the demographic. Since I was born there has been an increase of 140,000 thousand elderly people. That means more money is spent on the services that these people need to live, but what if we could design things that just push the need for these services back a few years, allowing people to live more independent and free lives? Would that not be better for all of us?
As I said before I have seen the impact an ageing population can have on a country, but I also have seen it first hand through my gran. She was an incredible woman and always championed living your best life, but as she aged it became more apparent to me that she couldn't live her best life. She needed help with everything in her life. Forget about the money for a minute, I know for a fact that my gran wouldn't have wanted to live like this.
So what am I proposing here from a design perspective? What is the solution? Well, I want to look at a few problems my gran encountered every week when she walked to her local Tesco.
My solution to these problems is just simply modifying existing elderly-focused products with modern technologies to improve their usability and all elderly people to live more independent lives. The reason for this is because people already understand how to use and interact with things like wheelchairs and walkers, they just aren't good enough to allow people to live independent lives. So let's take a look at a few existing products that I would modify.
The first is the walker:
A classic product that the majority of elderly people will have used. So what are its downsides? Well, its design puts a lot of stress on your hands and arms, this combined with the fact that its wheels have no suspension whatsoever makes for a product that in some cases can be harder to use than just walking without it.
So what would I change? Well, here is my proposed re-design with my modern technology modifications:
The idea with the ground quality sensors is to analyse the path coming up for the person. This data could then be used to communicate the areas in which the person should avoid, I would want this to be communicated in as many different ways as possible, think speakers, vibration and lights. This covers as many bases as possible (in terms of the physical limitations an elderly person may have). Could these sensors inform some sort of modern suspension system that evens out the bumps, reducing the stress on the arms and evening out the surface for the user. I think this design just shows how a few wee modifications can make the world of difference by improving the usability of a walker.
The next product that I would want to modify is the traffic light:
Just looking at this thing now, I have no idea how my gran managed to use them. That button is so small and unidentifiable that most elderly people wouldn't have a clue how to locate and press it. This is also exacerbated by the fact that it is indented into the base of the system. You think something as simple as a traffic light should be easy enough to design well! There is also no meaningful communication between the product and the user. How is an partially sighted elderly person supposed to know that their button press has actually worked? Well here is my redesign that I hope can solve these problems:
This is just a wee CAD design that I threw together to try and demonstrate how we can solve the aforementioned problems. The button was a major annoyance for me. That is why I increased its size by 4, making it a square with hard edges, extruded out of the base and ensured that it was lit yellow 24/7 (as yellow is the first colour the eye sees). These simple design modifications aren't even examples of modern technology implications. They are just common sense designs. The motion sensors have the potential to identify whether or not a person is waiting on the light and communicate any steps it takes back to the user. This idea of communication I think is key when developing these existing products as I feel as though all of them lack it.
The last modification isn't really a product, it's a system. A re-designed car park:
This concept is a potential car park in Dubai that displays open and closed spaces through green and red lights. However, I would want to take this a step further. Why don't we program the system to close entire rows of car arks and set these up as modifiable walking lanes? As the car park fills up we can then maybe re-open these spaces to allow more access for cars. This will do a few things for elderly pedestrians walking through the car park. It will allow for fast walking routes that cut right through the car park (instead of around) to be used while ensuring pedestrian safety is met.
These pretty basic designs show my overall feeling towards the way we currently design for elderly people. If we can design to allow people to lead more independent lives, their sense of self-worth will improve while we will be spending less money trying to support them.
That sounds like a win-win to me!
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