Intelligent everyday objects.
A Carnegie Mellon project the SenseChair (pdf) addresses trying to empower elderly people in their own homes by giving them ways to communicate.
"The SenseChair supports communication, information, and mobility in the favorite spot in the home. It collects data using sensors, and expresses signals using light, sound, and vibration. It can remind, warn, or help the elder with a variety of tasks. It can provide a sense of the environment for people who are less mobile. It can also control appliances in the vicinity of the chair. The SenseChair has several personalities: it can act as a coach, a colleague, or an entertainer. It relies on the position and pose of the sitter for input, and provides multimodal output ranging from ambient to explicit notification."
via AIGA.
Alexandra Sonsino | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
Keeping up.
This Guardian article goes into details of the recent BRMB poll that indicated that nearly half of all license fee payers are unwilling to pay to help elderly people face the switch to digital television.
It's a little disturbing to see another example of shortsightedness regarding the elderly and how they will adapt to our rapidly changing environment. Education is key in my opinion and we should keep them in tune with what is happening because technological isolation also might lead to isolation from interesting and valuable services that they would benefit from. Ignorance is not bliss.
Alexandra Sonsino | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
Architectures of Control
In response to my article 'Is Design Political?' on Core77, Dan Lockton sends this link to his site examining Architectures of Control, which he defines as "features, structures or methods of operation designed into any planned system with which a user interacts, which are intended to enforce or restrict certain user behaviour." Looks good. Has pictures.
Jennie Winhall | LINK | CITIZENSHIP | COMMENTS (0)
The blog is back
Hello readers - you may have noticed we've been quiet recently - well our blog broke. But now, thanks to the team here, it's fixed and normal service is resumed...
Chris Vanstone | LINK | | COMMENTS (0)
Does retirement have a future?
HSBC today published the results of a global survey of 20,000 individuals on their attitudes to retirement. Speaking on the radio this morning DR Ken Dytchtwald reported their findings: The vast majority of older people want to keep busy in later life, and are looking for employers to provide part time, flexitime and mentoring roles. People no longer believe that governments alone will provide for them in old age and that family, friends and fitness are more important than money for a happy old age. Download the full report here.
Chris Vanstone | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
Rethinking "End-of-life"
An interesting MSNBC article entitled"End-of-life housing that feels just like home"adresses the radical make-over that some homes for the elderly and Alzheimer patients are undergoing in California. The notion of a nursing home is getting closer to what a home actually is, and letting "people age how they have always lived" by transforming what were previously big and sterile buildings into cozy smaller environments.
"The advantages: cozy living, privacy (individual bedrooms and baths) and time for caregivers to get to know residents, not just their medical needs, but their life stories, too."
There are also advantages on the part of the care-givers as a long-term care expert explains in the article: "Compared with traditional nursing homes", she says, residents are more satisfied and in better physical shape. And in an industry with a massive work-force-retention problem, caregivers feel more empowered and relish the personal contact with residents. The result: they're more likely to stay on the job."
This it seems is a radical and great way of thinking of the end of our lives and makes institutional homes sound just that: institutional, cold and the very last place you'd want to spend your last years.
Alexandra Sonsino | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
Cell phones and the elderly
A Senior Journal article talks about the fact that elderly Americans aren't using the cell phone as much as they should in cases of emergencies which lead to the launch of the Jitterbug phone, a phone with oversized buttons and user-centered features.
This also links to a recent BBC article on the future of gadgets for the elderly and how technology can be harnessed to cater to an elderly person's needs at home. "Often the needs of an older population are at odds with the design of new gadgets." It's as if ease-of-use in gadgets is disappearing off the market while it is essential for the elderly who do represent an important part of market for cell phone and other high-tech devices.
Is this another element that proves that the market is blind to elderly people's needs? Does this come from lack of education or unwillingness to implement radical changes in the products that companies are offering? In a world where it takes mountains to move the placement of a button it could be a bit of both, but there needs to be a radical change of mind if this important part of the market (an estimated 140 billion dollars) is going to have its needs met by technology.
Alexandra Sonsino | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
Future casting activities for the elderly
This interesting AIGA case study addresses designing for an elderly person's everyday activities such as household chores. The brief was to address the redesign of cleaning products but ended up giving insightful results on "1) an initial understanding how aging changes older adults� ability to clean their homes and 2) a collection of speculative cleaning products that demonstrate how greater empathy for elderly users can motivate innovative design. "
Alexandra Sonsino | LINK | AGEING | COMMENTS (0)
