PRACTICAL VIEW : Gadget Mania : Aging Baby Boomers Demand Products That Make Life Easier
Stephen Melamed has been interested in designing products for the disabled and elderly since his graduate student days in the late ‘70s at the University of Illinois.
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“I did a lot of research on the partially disabled and on geriatrics,” he says. “Because of a close friend who was on crutches and her experience with accessibility, I was inspired by the strength it took to overcome the difficulties in everyday life.”
When he and two partners formed their award-winning Tres Design Group in 1982 in Chicago, they included products that met physical needs, some as simple as a sports massager for aching muscles and an easy-to-read bathroom scales.
Such items hardly made a ripple in the market at first, he says. “The disabled seemed to be such a small segment of the population, no one cared.”
But now, he is in the mainstream. “Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon,” he says.
“All of a sudden, we’re looking at the needs of the aging baby boomers.”
At last week’s International Housewares Show in Chicago, a major trend among the 2,000 exhibitors was a new generation of consumer products designed to make life around the house easier.
“Handy technology,” some have dubbed it. The print is bigger. Grips are textured. Controls are simplified. Pots and pans are lightweight. A sewing kit provides a needle that can be threaded with one hand. A push broom is ergonomically designed to ease lower-back stress.
The current buzzword, says Vicki Matranga of the National Housewares Manufacturers Assn., is universal design, a term that skirts connotation of disabilities or geriatrics.
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The basic concept, says Matranga, is that any design should serve people with varying skills and strengths.
Or, to put it more bluntly, “The baby boomers are getting older and realizing that arthritis is just around the corner,” says Kristina Goodrich at the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).
This change has coincided with implementation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Its requirement that businesses provide “reasonable accommodations” for disabled workers has increased attention to accessible design.
Among designers, Goodrich says, the universal trend has been building for some time.
“In the 1970s it was called ‘barrier-free’ design and the concern was for the physically disabled. It applied mostly to architecture, but product design was also included.
“In the 1980s, it emerged on a different front as the Gray Panthers became more outspoken on the needs of older people.”
Now, says Goodrich, with the aging of 50 million baby boomers, industry is beginning to get the message. Familiar products are taking on a new look.
“Now we have a major bathroom manufacturer (Kohler) promoting a bathtub with a door that opens to let you walk in, so you don’t have to climb over a slippery tub.”
Even such everyday accessories as doorknobs are being re-examined, says Goodrich. “Doorknobs can’t be used by people with grease on their hands, can’t be used by people with their arms full of groceries or carrying a baby, or by people with arthritis. Handles, instead of door knobs, can be used by your chin or your elbow.”
That illustrates the essence of universal design: “Do what’s going to work the best for most people in most situations.”
This is good news to the many designers like Melamed who are concerned with ease of use.
Some samples of new universal design:
* Designer-consultant Patricia Moore of Phoenix, a campaigner for practical products, says it makes sense to support the needs of all consumers. One of her designs is a set of pill bottles with twist-on caps that record the time the medication was last taken. The bottles may benefit senior citizens with multiple daily prescriptions, she says, as well as parents with an ailing child. “It’s a very universal design,” says Moore. “Even veterinarians like them.”
* Housewares manufacturer Sam Farber took up cooking in retirement and became frustrated with the available utensils, finding them ugly and hard to hold. He turned to Smart Design, which came up with Good Grips, a set of colorful peelers and scrapers and scissors with oversized, textured handles.
“They’re selling like crazy, and not just to people with arthritis,” says Tucker Viemeister, 44, vice president of Smart Design. “I think the baby-boom generation is looking at our parents and realizing we might as well get ready now.”
* Anderson Design Assn., which has won awards from the Society on Aging, offers such creative home accessories as a compact sewing kit for users with impaired vision. Its cover doubles as a magnifier, sliding back to reveal such features as a built-in needle threader with wire loop and slotted guide block and spring-action scissors for people with limited hand strength.
The Anderson group has also introduced the Helper, a cane that can retrieve objects from high or low spots using gripper jaws.
“We call it transgenerational design,” says president Eric Anderson.
* “There’s a lot of disposable income among the graying baby-boom population, no question about it,” says Mark Wollman of HWE Inc. in North Hollywood, known for its trendy range of health massage equipment. “And there’s more concern about their overall health. It used to be ‘How do I look?’ Now the question is, ‘How do I feel?’ ”
One of HWE’s new products, the PEAR, is a desktop device aimed at preventing repetitive strain injury among computer users. It beeps for rest breaks and acts as a hand-held oscillator.
“It used to be very difficult to get any retailers to believe in our health products, but they’ve just taken off in the last five years,” says Wollman.
* Zelco Industries, a family business, has unveiled its small Flexible Flashlight with a bright krypton bulb and a bendable arm that gets into hard-to-reach places, like behind the couch.
The firm’s Aqua Pilltimer is a portable flask for travelers that holds pills and two ounces of water. “It has a little straw that pops out,” says Zelco’s Nicole Zeller, 26. “I’m not old, but I take pills and I take it with me when I travel. Sometimes you can’t find water or a cup.”
* Babies have not been ignored in the new wave of practical designs. The Adam Strause Co. has Spoons to Grow With, a line of animal-shaped handles that kids can easily grasp.
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Industry observers say these new products represent just the beginning of the universal design boom.
“We’re in an evolutionary period now, and when it catches on, it’s going to be revolutionary,” says James J. Pirkl, who retired recently as chairman of Syracuse University’s design department.
He prefers the label transgenerational and has just completed a book on the future of the new designs.
“The youth-oriented society is changing, and we’re seeing a number of enlightened manufacturers respond,” he says. “As a result, there will be a lot fewer people who will be frustrated because they can’t read the dial or open the package.”
The IDSA’s Kristina Goodrich sees the new era as “very positive.”
“Designers are getting interested in the product needs of the elderly--not only because they are beginning to share those needs but also because they can do something about it,” she says. “I think it’s an exciting time to be around.”
Melamed points out that user-friendly products for those with special needs work for everyone. For example, a large-button VCR tailored for an 80-year-old would be welcomed at any age.
