Empowering Through Design: What a Health-Wellness Concept!
We’ve all had experiences trying to accomplish a task that is way too hard — and one reason it’s so difficult is because the environment is not designed to help a person function and work efficiently. Many of us have watched our aging parents grow frustrated, especially in medical settings, where equipment and furniture is overly complex and where even simple things, like light switches, sometimes look like they belong in the complex control panel of an airplane. And it’s not just elders, but patients in general. In the biography by Walter Isaacson, Apple Computer’s Steve Job, then seriously ill and hospitalized, noted that hospital equipment needed dramatic redesigning.
Click on this thumbnail to see a larger picture of the rolling hospital tray mentioned in the Wired article.
To learn more check out Empowering Patients Through Design, a short article at Wired Science reporting on a speech at the Wired Health Conference. The October 15, 2012 article describes Michael Graves’ presentation, explaining how he became a hospital patient and then discovered that he could no longer function efficiently — even in a rehabilitation setting. The medical rooms, equipment, and other materials were poorly designed for people with disabilities.
Graves, a renown architect, found a new calling, combining his professional knowledge with his experience as a patient and becoming a proponent of human centered design. This type of architecture aims to make health care environments, as well as other settings, more comfortable and user-friendly. “I decided that since I was a designer and architect and a patient, I have the credentials to do this,” Graves said at the conference.
In health care human centered design focuses on every part of the patient’s care experience from hospital and patient rooms to floors, light switches, and even signs. Graves and his group have designed hospital furniture that takes the specific needs of patients into consideration.
Changing the Home in Small Ways for Senior Residents
A grab bar on wall above tub helps a person climb out.
Read Small Changes Enough to Keep Aging Seniors in Home, an April 21, 2011 article in the Kansas City Star. Reporter Diane Stafford describes how small tweaks and novel ideas can help a seniors remain in a much-loved home. These adjustments range from grab bars and higher toilets in bathroom to throw rug removal in places that are highly traveled. The article also describes some of the services that are available to seniors now, as well as others that may soon be used in the future.
Some time ago a post in this blog, Making Our House Safer for Aging Parents and For Ourselves, described how my family made some basic changes to our house. At first we tweaked various spots in the house to accommodate our senior parents when they were visiting, but now we find we happily use them ourselves.
Home accommodation demonstration videos are available on YouTube. For instance, the Visiting Nurses Service of New York has posted a series of “How to Help” videos on its website and on a visiting nurses channel on YouTube.
Teens Mentoring Seniors and Mobile Phones
Saw this article, Want to Know What Your Cell Phone Can Do? Ask a Teenager, published in a Patch.com Reston,Virginia edition.
The article describes how middle and high school students, from schools in the Reston, Virginia area, volunteered to be cell phone tutors with seniors, showing the elders how to use mobile phone features such as texting and checking voice mail. While many of the senior participants attending Cell Phone 101 had purchased phones for safety reasons, most were not able to use many of the other phone capabilities. The student mobile phone mentors demonstrated a variety new ways for the seniors to use their phone, and voicemail tutorials appeared to be especially popular. Students also explained how some of the phone capabilities cost extra money to use.
A Garden Product for Everyone — But Great for Seniors
My herb garden and crepe myrtle waiting for spring.
Since we’ve been helping our parents with various tasks, we are keenly aware that some products might as well have the words AGING (or aged) etched into them. Since I avidly read posts from the MIT Age Lab, AgeTek, Laurie Orlov’s Aging in Place Technology Watch, and Eric Dishman, I know that new products aimed exclusively at “old people” are frequently disliked and barely used by seniors.
These days any products aimed at assisting people in some way must also appeal to everyone else. They must be attractive and look good. Now, for the first time, something in my life, never mind my parents lives, has appeared that fits the bill with beautiful design and easy use. It may just help me out.
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and for a while all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
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