Why Don't We Ask the People We're Creating For?

Well, I may be visually impaired, but I’m blessed with very good health, confirmed by the fact that I use no prescription medications. Three days a week, I go to a fitness center for two hours or more. Until I started that regimen a year ago, I would walk up to two miles a day.

I had a career in occupational therapy for 44 years. I worked with physically handicapped patients, first of all for 20 years in the service, and then I saw how there was such a need for well-designed equipment.

This prepared me for my next career that happened three decades later. For five years, I was engaged as a conceptual designer. That’s a term I coined for myself because I wanted to create a job for myself at IDEO, a very well-recognized design engineering firm in Palo Alto.

They took me on. I advised on equipment, products and services for the low-vision and elder populations. It soon became known that there was somebody in her 90s on the payroll in Silicon Valley. A woman, at that.

This led to my being picked up by the media. Then I was invited, of all places, to the White House to speak at the Conference on Aging. There, my message to the people I spoke to was: Design with us, not for us.

My recommendation to any designers here working for these populations is to go and live in a senior residence for at least a week, preferably a month. You will have a firsthand view of what the spoken and unspoken needs are for that population, people who have mobility needs, loss of vision, loss of hearing and loss of memory.

For eight years, I have lived in three different senior residences, with up to 185 units, and I’ve had a front-row seat to seeing what the needs are of this population.

I found what the needs were for mobility, balance, vision loss, hearing loss and memory loss. I have designed up to 30 pieces of equipment and clothing.

Most notably, I tried to design airbags worn at the waist to prevent hip fractures and mitigate brain injuries. Didn’t work.

But my most vigorous attempt was to design a more dynamic walker that allowed for opposite arm-leg, normal gait patterns. Well, I’ve worked at it for years. It hasn’t worked yet.

My most consistent observation is the misuse, the premature use and sometimes the inappropriate use of the walker.

I believe that the use of the walker prevents good posture. It prevents opposite arm-leg, normal gait. Worse than that, people lean on it, put pressure on their arms and may injure their shoulders.

Instead, for my own vision loss and for safety in ambulation, I use adapted ski poles. I recommend these for many reasons.

You will already know: good posture, automatic arm-leg movement and good use of the hip muscles, where the reflexes for balance are so important.

I like to say, “Keep your ears over your hips and your hips over your heels, and you’re less apt to stumble. But nose over toes, you’ll be in for a tumble.”

I would like to create a new category of seniors. I would like to call them über elders.

I define über elders very clearly as someone 95 and beyond who is living a fulfilling life and a purposeful life.

In the new book I’m writing, this is my fifth book, the title is Healthy Aging Begins in Adolescence. I’m dedicating it to über elders.

I believe that healthy aging can be summed up by this motto: Stay vertical and move forward with a sense of humor and an inquisitive, creative mind.

Thank you very much.