Why a designer must learn something about...

GERONTODESING

There are simple reasons for learn something about gerontodesing, not only for being designers, simply because we are humans and we are getting old as a nation, as a world…

Gerontodesign is about be emphatic with the "others" , talking about "the others" we need to think who are they, what does they like?…and really who are "the others"? are we?.

As a humans we need to become more emphatic with the life that occurs in our society. In the 80's and 90's we star to see more the disrespect that young people demonstrate to elders, also David Cravit in his book called "The New Old" talks about what's happening to the baby boomers, people who start the revolution against old, and now they are old.

So, we need to learn about gerontodesing, because we need to be emphatic humans and emphatic designers, using techniques like the user centered design or ethnography we will know more about elders, about the persona and these lead us to be better designers.

It's a fact . World is getting old, and we need more and new  products to solve new needs.

Demographics in Gerontodesign - Latin America- Mexico

2030 : 1 of 6 persons will be over 60 years old (LARNA, 2010).

SABE 2001

Mexico City: 13% of people over 70 years old live alone and 24% with somebody else (Archundia,2010).

So, maybe Latin America isn't getting older, fast as Europe or Asia, but the fact is that is getting older, maybe slowly, but it is happening! …Gerontodesing must start to be tough

Demographics in Gerontodesign

There's no need to write to much about this topic : Demographics…., why? because the images that we'll show you in this post will tell you all.

The world is getting old.

Taken from 2nd LARNA

From ONU 2011

Taken from 2nd LARNA

We know that Japan is the oldest country in the world and also Germany, Italy, Spain are olds countries, also we know that Countries like Qatar are young, Mexico is now with the middle age of 26, but in a few decades will be old too. Is easy to think that what happens in Japan doesn't concern to the others countries, but common'! we live in a globalized world in which what we do in Mexico affects in China… and vice-versa.

Why Gerontodesign?

When you live with people that are more than 70 years old you start to think about their needs, when you see that all the things that could help the elders are located in medical stores you start to think that maybe this is not good…


The products for elders usually located at medical stores are lacking of emotional design. It's difficult to understand why people think that elders are people with a disease, because old people aren't sick people.


85% of the information that we received comes from the eyes and 10% by the sense of hearing, almost every activity and mobility are realized by combining those senses, this information lead us to think what happen when we reach the 75 years old and our sense of hearing and seeing are decreased?


It's necessary to start to thinking about gerontodesign because after the 60 years old, the people start to lose their physical abilities. We have been saying that disabled people are not elders and elders are not disabled people, maybe sometimes elders are disabled and disables are elders, but not always… Is because of that, that gerontodesign must be created and started.


Caroline Günther -Luckow, Dipl.-Ing. Architect,M.Sc (2011) tell us her opinion about this topic in this way: 


"In my opinion it is essential to develop new housing concepts for the elderly as our present situation is not up to date. The aging population is growing older in a different way. Expectations towards life as well as the standard of life have changed. In Europe the population is getting older. The reasons are a very much improved health care, better financial situation and the personal aim to stay in form longer. Generally I believe we need to consider the emotional aspect far more and integrate this into our planning routine."


In the next post we will talking about demographics reasons….

:)

Gerontotechnology

Jan Graafmans (1989) at the University of Technology (Eindhoven, Europe) defined the term "Gerontotechnology" as the study of technology and aging in order to improve the daily life functions in the old people, Lawton (1998) defined it like this: is the adaptation and products, services and environments development to the needs of a aging population.

Ávila Alva (2010) talks about an analysis of the vision of Lawton in applications of gerontotechlogy:

1. For improve functions decreased.
2.Compensate for lost functions.
3. Prevent illness associate with aging.
4.Support elder care.
5.Promote aging research.

Gerontotechnology and Gerontodesign are similar in some kind of way, but we need to remember that design has 3 spheres that composed it, there are:

1. Function
2. Technology
3. Aesthetics

Maybe the term gerontotechnology stays in a limit and gerontodesign goes further, also a difference between gerontodesing and gerontotechlogy is the word "adapt"… the Gerontodesign looks for design/ create no to adapt things. When we say "adapt" we are creating at the same time a barrier or a stigmatization in the product, is maybe the same that occurs when we "adapt" things for disabled people…

As humans we want to be recognized like an valuable entity and if we think how we will feel using products that were designed for somebody else and have this --adaptation-- to us, then we'll know what's the feeling in a daily life of a disabled people; because the functional need is solved but what happen to the emotional need? is already solved too?

I'm not saying that gerontotechnology is "bad", no! Gerontotechnology is a very important part of gerontodesign, also in the internet there are information about this:

http://www.gerontechnology.info/

http://gerontechnology.net/

http://www.redenvejecimiento.com/index.php/en/researching-aims/gerontechnology

http://books.google.com.mx/books?hl=es&lr=&id=uv1BEgOz5pgC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=gerontechnology&ots=XNPKrF3fu-&sig=rDkeOvIaXNSFqOCR6XgqZFLcjv0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Examples of Gerontodesign

We have been saying that the design for elders is really beginning, but this doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, may be the gerontodesign that we want (with the base of emotional design) does not have been design or created yet….

We put some examples here, that are the first products for elders, we need to repeat that elders are not sick people, an elder person can be a disabled person, but a disabled person is not always an elder.

Some gerontodesign products…but some of them are lacking of emotional design
 

This stove was designed in Japan, as we know Japan is the oldest country in the world right now!

Gerontodesign Background

The concept is very new, but also has a lot of background history, in this post we show you some

TOPIC	WHOS	WHAT	REFERENCE
Gerontodesign	Dr. Joaquim Parra Marujo (2006)	Concept	http://jmarujo.artician.com/portfolio/gerontodesign/
Gerontodesign	Calçado Bemicar (2007)	Elders shoes	http://bemicarcalcado.blogspot.com/2007/11/calado-gerontodesign.html
Gerontodesign	Fisk,A;Rogers,W.;Charness,N.;Czaja, S.; Sharit, J.(2004)	Design for elders guide, gerontotechnology	Fisk,A;Rogers,W.;Charness,N.;Czaja, S.; Sharit, J.(2004) Designing for older adults New York, EUA Taylor & Francis Group
Social Design	Victor Papanek (1984)	“Design for the real World”	Design for the real world, human ecology and social change Victor Papanek 1984
Universal Design	Fundación ONCE en España (2006)	White book of design for all	http://sid.usal.es/idocs/F8/FDO16904/libro_blanco_universidad.pdf
Inclusive design	Marvin Lara  (2008)	Universidad de Carleton, design for people who have arthritis	Carleton University School of Industrial Design IDES 4001
Inclusive design	Morenos Ramos D, y Corregidor Sánchez AI (2010)	Urban design for elders	http://www.revistatog.com/mono/num3/urbanismo.pdf
Medical Design and some gerontodesign	Parsons ADL	Products	www.parsonsadl.com
Gerontodesign	Arizona University , EUA	Elders stove design	http://uanews.org/node/16606
Gerontodesign	Charles y Hudson	Kitchen's for elders	http://www.charlesandhudson.com/
Social Design	Andrew Wootton, Universidad deSalford (2006)	Business and responsability	www.sociallyresponsibledesign.org
Sustainable design and user's behavior	Dr.Debra Lilley / Dr.Vicky Lofthouse (2007)	How design can influence the user's behavior	www.design-behaviour.co.uk
Gerontodesign	Fundación Helen Hamlyn En el Royal College of Art (1991)	The program had the goal of make conscience about design for elderly population	http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/archive/hhrc/programmes/designage/index.html
Gerontodesign	Joseph Coughlin y el MIT de Massachusetts  (1999 - a la fecha)	Multidisciplinary group that is focus on how you and me will live tomorrow	http://agelab.mit.edu/
Gerontodesign	OMS  (2005)	Age Friendly Cities	http://www.imsersomayores.csic.es/documentos/documentos/oms-globalagefriendlycities-01.pdf
Gerontotechnology	Instituto de Geriatría México (2010)	Focus in the analysis, design and implementation of solutions that are based on technology applications oriented to solve or prevent problems that are related to aging process	Perspectivas para el desarrollo de la investigación sobre el envejecimiento y la gerontecnología en México Memorias del Encuentro Nacional sobre Envejecimiento y Salud Agosto 2010 http://www.geriatria.salud.gob.mx/
Universal Design	International Design Center in Berlin	Elders design	http://www.idz.de/en/sites/1368.html  http://www.idz.de/en/sites/5.html
Inclusive Design	IDeA Center, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access, Buffalo, USA	Elders design	http://www.ap.buffalo.edu/idea/home/index.asp
Inclusive Design	NC State University, Center for Universal Design	Elders design	http://www.ncsu.edu/project/design-projects/udi/

What is not gerontodesign?

When we see an elder person whit a cane or in a wheel chair we used to think that the person is using the products for the elders, we used to get confused about medical design and gerontodesign.

Medical design can be used by everybody, a child or a pregnant woman, an adult or a teen ager could be the users of one medical design product.

The example that I love to used for the explain this idea is Dr. House.
Why Dr. House?

The cane that House use to walk is a symbol that he distorts into another new one, a cane is a medical design object that represents some kind of pain and disability, also a cane represents power, represents respect (Do you remember Moises or Noe?) so, the cane is a symbol of aging and House doesn't want to be old, so he distorts the cane, he converts it into a symbol that maybe makes him more interesting or sexier (for some women), so he turns the cane's symbols into another's one's…

Gerontodesign is in some kind of way the Dr. House cane's, is resolve the necessities of elders in a different way, because the elders are different now, and even if we talk about a 90 years old person, we are not talking about a boring or sad person, so may be the cane with flames will be ok…:) 

what do you think?

What is gerontodesign?

Gerontodesign could be defined as the design for  elders, but the topic is more specific. 

First we need to know who is an elder person and what characteristics presents, second we need to know what is design.

Design is to designate something to someone or to something, the concept of design goes over the aesthetics and the functional, the concept involves more than one specific topic.

Joaquim Parra Marujo defines gerontodesign in this way:

"Is the agglutination of gerontology and design" (2006)

The universal design is one concept that precedes the gerontodesign, because the universal design is about accessibility and it haves the goal of make that all the people have the same opportunities in the social life, the concept of universal design was defined in 2004 at the declaration of Stockholm EIDD.

The universal design looks for the inclusion of elders, as we know the inclusive design includes people in so many ways, one way is making products and services inclusive for all and other way is making it exclusive.

Gerontodesign is an exclusive design that includes elders into the society.

So, as a first approach we can say that gerontodesign is the design for elders that is focus in the inclusion of them by designing exclusive products and services, all that based in the inclusive and emotional design.

..to be continued 

:)