By Drue Lawlor, FASID, and chair of the ASID Aging in Place Council
The annual Kitchen & Bath Show, held in Chicago last weekend, was overflowing with products for designers to research, with new products to dazzle and excite us, as well as updated versions of the old “standbys.” The constant flow of creative additions of new products onto an already crowded market reinforces the need to do our research. For a home that will truly “serve” your clients throughout their lives, you need to go the extra mile when doing that research.
As designers, we should be designing in the “4th dimension”: putting ourselves in the place of our clients. In product development this is known as “experience design.” Now ask yourself how far you are willing to go with this process. Imagination is a wonderful tool, but we all know experience can be the best teacher. With this in mind, here are some suggestions, or “exercises,” to help you more easily understand the challenges faced by clients with varying levels of ability, whether they be temporary or permanent. After all, you are more effective in specifying products and asking the right questions when you have personally experienced some of the challenges that might be met.
The next time you are planning a trip to a kitchen and bath showroom, experiment with the following “challenges”:
1. Borrow or rent a wheelchair for the day. Then test the accessibility of products while sitting in, and maneuvering around a model kitchen or bathroom while seated in the wheelchair. Try accessing and using as many products as possible without leaving the chair, and definitely try out that 60” minimum turning space. This exercise will also allow you to experience what a caregiver, or the wheelchair user, might go through when having to load and unload a wheelchair from a vehicle.
Lessons learned: Spending just this brief time in a wheelchair will give you an insight into what some people live with every day. If you try to transfer to or from the wheelchair while in a seated position (for example, to get in and out of a tub), you will experience the restraints and advantages of certain product designs, as well as appreciate the importance of the space planning layout itself. Your empathy and respect for those who have to maneuver mobility aids day after day will definitely increase.
2. Put on heavy cotton gloves (such as garden gloves), and then experience first-hand any challenges when trying to operate various appliance controls, plumbing fixtures or features that require fine motor skills. You might also go through the same process using cotton tape wrapped around your knuckles or to tape fingers together, instead of the cotton gloves. (Be sure that you do not have a skin condition that might react negatively to the tape, if trying this last experiment.)
The above exercise will give you a taste of the challenges for someone whose joints have become less flexible or swollen, or whose sense of touch is not as acute, or a myriad of other age-related issues that may cause one to feel more clumsy and less adept at using many of the products on the market that once would have been no problem at all.
3. Find an inexpensive pair of magnifying glasses, and either spray the lenses with hairspray or spread Vaseline on them. Then with the glasses on, experience the challenges of finding multi-colored pills on a countertop that has a strong pattern. Also notice the glare coming off a highly polished countertop in a brightly lighted space. Try to read the controls on the appliances. In some instances the challenge might be finding the appliance itself if it blends in too well with its surroundings.
Lessons learned: This exercise might help you to empathize with issues caused by vision impairment, such as cataracts.
These are relatively simple exercises, but you may find that the results are surprisingly helpful. Hopefully, you will begin to look at many of the products on the market through a different “lens” and begin to realize, after this small foray into “experiential” research, the value of going further in that research. And it will serve as a reminder of the importance of designing in the 4th dimension, which will reap great rewards when you find those products that can make such a positive change in a client’s life.