Tilt

At the Royal College of Art, we went to a Design Business Association (DBA) event based on the Design Inclusive Challenge. This project is a world recognized and specialty project to present a problem and receive an end product via designers who donate their time. Early on in the process, there is an elimination period where a proposal is entered and a group of designers are narrowed to begin development of their ideas. This time four groups were selected:

1. Clinic: Developed a collaborative trading website called Sage & Onions (They were the winner)
2. BWA: Designed a website called Footnote
3. 1HQ: Created a surface called Move using emerging technology
4. Epitype: Generated a clever marketing campaign to grow awareness and called it Open Age Brackets

The statement and question were posed at the beginning of the conversation; We design for Babies and have created a whole industry out of it. Why not design for old people? They make up £250 billion a year. Considered the “Third Age,” of life, this generation accounts for anyone above the age of 50. If you are a baby, child, tween, teen and young adult for the first 25 years of your life, you are only an adult for 25 years before you are considered old.

The goal of this challenge was to change perception and expected quality, creating a whole new series of products and efforts towards Our Future Selves. This is a great concept and should be cared for in generous terms.

How do we as a culture deal with people from 50 years or more continued to be the theme. Older people are slower typically and more cautious. Some are closer to the end of their lives and (hopefully) beginning to share in some of the enjoyments of retirement. But others still have the desire to work and are being effected and mistreated by employers, employees and fellow commuters by their speedy and unthoughtful attitudes.

Emma Soames from Saga Magazine, granddaughter of William Churchill spoke at length about her research working for an older persons publication. “No body wants to be old. So no one talks about it. Our arrogance gets in the way. You are in a powerful place to make the visible better and to get the best part out of being old.” When discussing design for this generation, here are her thoughts, “A lot of what ends of happening is based on being distracted and showing off to your peers instead of doing the task at hand and proving the problem. We need designers who are willing to do the research and solve the problem.”

Another speaker discussed her voice and mission at the University of the 3rd Age which was just fascinating. She kept bringing up the point about technology and how her age group needs to spend more time focused on learning it for fear that they will eventually become, “Digitally excluded or digitally allergic.” That’s an interesting comment.

Design is about consideration and problem solving. Getting bogged down with the day to day, we have forgotten this very important piece of information and we need to do whatever it takes to get back to my roots as a designer. It is about challenging yourself and being completely thoughtful of your audience… engaging them every step of the way throughout a project. It is important to remove egos from the design and just be totally focused on the task at hand.

So, the challenge is, can you solve the problem and remove your ego from the process?