Flat for the elderly

Designing a flat for the elderly should be the same as designing for different types of impairments that elderly people may get together with older age. Designing a flat generally speaking for elderly people might include solutions that are not needed or miss some that are important.

A person that is 65 years of age is likely to have different needs compared to an elderly person that has reached the age of 90. Even so, not all people that have reached a specific age have the same needs and for this reason the flat has to be adapted and personalized according to the needs of the person that is about to use it.

Here follows a series of impairments that elderly people might have and possible solutions for them:

Visual impairment

I would equip the flat with a text reader, which transforms text into sound. This can be useful for situations when the glasses are not sufficient, but also for advanced cases of visual impairment.

Motoric impairment

For low motoric impairment needs I think it would be great to have voice recognition in the flat for light switch, for example. This should be present additionally to the classic light switch. Curtains could be shut and opened through the same method.

There should be no doorsteps.

A trolley together with a walker could help carry heavy objects around the flat. This is the example with the nicest design that I could find online:

If the person is using a wheelchair, then the height of different objects in the house should be lowered. The elderly person should place all kitchen tools, including plates and fridge at a level that is reachable. Carpets are removed and tiles are avoided, as they can be slippery. Voice recognition should be present for dialing emergency numbers in case of an accident.

Memory loss

A touch-based screen should display the schedule of that person in the room where she / he spends most time.  Things to do or to remember should also be displayed.

Objects that are often lost should have a chip attached, which should make it possible to find through a map of the flat or through a vibrating devices that vibrates stronger when the person is closer to the lost object.

Last but not least

Social isolation

Connection to Skype and calling family and friends should be voice recognized.

A system picks up status updates and pictures that their grandchildren upload on Facebook, for example, but other social medias can also be included. They receive an announcement in real time when that happens, maybe on a touch-screen display that is positioned next to their favorite chair. The system strips the information from Facebook design and displays only pure text and images that the user can click on in order to browse.

The iPad is a tool that has been often used in activity centers for elderly people and seems to have a rather intuitive interface, so it might be a good platform. The grandchildren have, of course, the option of making a special group on Facebook where the grandparents will be placed so that they can’t access party pictures. It is their options as well to share this type of information with their grandparents, but such constant updates might be beneficial in the sense that the elderly people feel involved and updated in real-time.

This was my brief guess on how a flat for elderly persons could be equipped. Interviews and observation techniques could be used in order to identify if these solutions and needs are actually present for elderly people that have the listed type of impairments. Additional needs would certainly result from the research, leading to additional solutions as well.

Reflection wheelchairs

The star of the exercise was the electric wheelchair for me. The fact that it could go in the same type of terrain as the 4-wheeler and seemed to offer quite a great deal of precision when going into elevators made it very flexible and even fun when in full speed. Being able to take it indoors, into a shop or supermarket while at the same time being able to reach the speeds of a bike also added to its flexibility. The electric wheelchair also made it possible to stop on a leaned terrain and makes a hilly city not so difficult to travel around.

There were many downsides, of course. It was heavy, big and difficult to steer in narrow areas. It can’t be flipped inside a car. That leads to the fact that the user has to drive it home no matter the weather. In Swedish autumn rain and winter snow, altogether, more than half of the year.

It’s probably not the absolute solution, but just the equivalent of a mountain bike that gets you into tough terrains but is not as flexible to ride in a wide variety of situations. It doesn’t offer the comfort of being protected from weather, but it sure gives the freedom of travelling almost anywhere!

The improvements that such an electric wheelchair could support would be minimal. The weight could be reduced, although it is useful when riding at high speeds. The joystick is already quite self-explaining, but the looks could add to it. The electric wheelchair feels already like a minimized version of a four-wheeler in some demanding situations. It could very well borrow a bit from the tough look of a four-wheeler. Bigger wheels, black paint and an elegant, smooth design could suggest the tough terrains that it is capable of going through.

The manual wheelchair could be upgraded with a break, which makes it possible to hit buttons at the top of the ramp or relax on terrain that is not perfectly flat. A system where the user maybe doesn’t have to touch the wheels, but a leverage connected to the wheels might help against the dirt on the streets.

 

Dialogue in the dark

Tommy Edison’s video that showed the lack of usability of money reminded me of an own experience.  Several years ago I went to a technical museum where I could try out something called “Dialogue in the dark”. That meant that during one hour I was taken into a completely dark room and guided by a person who was blind. I was handed different objects that I could feel and listen to sounds that I was supposed to recognize. The guide had been born blind but told us about her life in various cities in France where she had moved because of studies. She had graduated three Bachelor programs and spoke several foreign languages. The experience was very interesting at many levels, but Tommy Edison’s video made me remember some specific parts of it.
At the end of the “Dialogue in the dark” we could have a cup of coffee with her and had to buy it and pay for it. Needless to say, it was impossible to tell which money I handed in order to pay for the coffee and in that moment I realized that I won’t be able to tell afterwards either if I had been cheated for e simple reason that I had no idea which bills my wallet contained.
I had to trust them on it. Then I received the coffee and it felt strange not to be able to tell if that which I received was in order, for example if the cup is clean, if there is nothing floating in the coffee and so on. Thoughts like that pop up when you are used to verify quality using sight.
The Euros seem to be a bit better than the dollars when it comes to easiness to use by people who are blind. They slightly vary in size and they have differently shaped shiny areas which feel smooth to touch. But then I was thinking of how one goal that Sweden has is to replace cash and switch to card payment. There are some shops that have already given up use of cash. Imagining at Tommy Edison would be in such a society and go to a bar to buy a beer then there would be no way for him to tell that the bartender has not just added herself a big tip.
The prerequisites don’t exist today, but, if done right, paying by card could be a good solution for people who are blind in order to make sure they always pay the right amount.
We can imagine a desirable scenario. Tommy orders a beer and the girl comes with a card-reading device and places it in front of him. Tommy has a vibrating bracelet that helps him find the machine, preferably without help from the bartender. The buttons have Braille code on them so that Tommy finds the button which reads out loud the final sum. He then puts in his PIN code without need for additional vocal help, which is good, because it does not draw additional attention.
An alternative scenario is when the girl leaves with his card in order to come back with a receipt. Tommy has to trust her just as much as people who can see do that card information is not being copied somehow. I am unsure of costs, but having the total sum that has to be paid also in Braille on the receipt could of course help. The field for tips should be well marked and easy to identify through a tactile border.
One more aspect I found interesting in the “Dialogue in the dark” experience. The woman simulated taking us through different streets of Strasbourg, where could use our senses in order to distinguish familiar places or objects. The sounds echoed a bit, which sometime hinted to the closed space that we were in, but the experience felt shockingly accurate at some moments. It actually felt like we were in a café full of people and that is where we got fooled again.

What is it like?

One important part of Design is Understanding. In order to make good design for a certain person with a certain impairment, we have to understand:

1. The character of the impairment.
2. The situation of the individual.
3. The needs for the person in various situation.

How can we understand what a certain impairment means to a person, if we don’t have the impairment ourselves? Part of the understanding comes (in my perspective) from an open mind. So how can we open our minds for the new perspectives? One way is to listen to people with different impairments, and hear their stories. There will be links provided to a number of youtube vides that can be viewed in order to try to understand what it is like.

The easier aspects of some impairments can be at least hinted to by “experiments”. However, just closing your eyes for a few minutes is not going to make you understand what it is like to be blind. The simplest and most obvious reason is that you can open your eyes again, for example, once you lose your orientation.

However, we can sample parts of the world, with carefully designed experiments, even if we by this never can understand what it is really like to live with the impairment.

To take a simple, but effective example. Look at the picture with the blind golfer below.

What is the problem of playing golf without seeing on this course? Obviously it would be pretty easy to get a hole-in-one… But wait a minute, what happens then? If you start to think about it, the problem is not getting the ball into the hole, but rather to find the hole, where the ball dropped.