3 quick links to 3 smart things

1. Steven Kuusisto on the "post-physical" fantasy of many technophiles -

We are, it seems, living in the age of the promissory “improved” body—yet that body is still stuck between the territories of production (politics), reproduction (material expense) and imagination (compulsory normativity).

Kuusisto writes that this ideal of a mechanized world that alleviates or "eliminates" disability is not a neutral product of technological innovation - it is the result of particular processes of imagination, wrapped in political concerns (i.e. who plans, who pays, who decides who and what gets to be post-physical?). In other words,

[the post-physical ideal] evokes Bill Clinton’s remark: “If you see a turtle on a fence post you can bet he didn’t get there by accident.”

2. Wheelchair Dancer on emergency plans - personal and administrative - for people with disabilities.

Katrina seems to have been a turning point in disaster planning for people with disabilities... Since then, I have seen numerous conference announcements, notices for research reports and lists of paper abstracts talking about disaster planning for people with disabilities. (An unfortunate side effect of all this good work is the now popular phrase "vulnerable populations.")

(note: this is an issue that also came to mind for me at the time of the inauguration, when officials suggested people with disabilities stay at home)

3. An interview with Pattie Moore, an industrial design consultant whose 1979 experiment of disguising herself as an elderly woman brought light to accessible design issues (via Core77).

In the 70s, we were told we design for a Caucasian, 40 years old, living on Long Island, with 2.3 kids. We didn’t even really design for women. And if you brought up the idea of designing for people with arthritis, for example, they would say, “We don’t design for those people!”

Also related: giant NY Times magazine article about the aging "market."

fun ideas for a sunny friday

I always feel a bit touchy around the many "experimental design for the disabled" sites/blog posts/articles you see around.. but these wheelchair designs, selected by mainstream design site Switched, are pretty fun:


A pink-cushioned bent plywood armchair in the style of the Eames Chair, fitted with matching tires and an ottoman, would be hell on the balance but makes a clear (intended) comment about the difference between brand-name design icons and designs for assistive technologies.

Roll.Charge.Light.Protect offers the idea of wheelchair spokes that light up (charged by the wheels, of course) for safer night wheeling. Definitely reminiscent of the many light-up gizmos commuter cyclists choose for helmet, seat, clothes and fenders.

Switched also did a post of design prototypes for gadgets for visually impaired users - interesting that all but one are for computerized readers/sensors of some kind. Designers often fall into the trap of assuming all assistive devices are extremely high-tech, expensive specialty items, and overlook the everyday technologies everyone uses - wonder what potential any of these have to be integrated into mass-market products, as current screen-readers are - on the iPad, for example..

I hate my iPhone

or at least Virginia Heffernan does (I don't have one-- thanks, I'm online too much already).




When I talk to anyone over 60 or so, the cell phone issue often comes up. These things don't work that well for a lot of people-- they are small and hard to see and hard to program. The market seems to provide for the range of preferences-- don't like the iPhone, get a Blackberry.. or a Jitterbug, pictured above. The letters are larger and "click" when you push them, the screen is stripped down to the basics with few add-ons or menus, and there's an ultra-simple keypad option to use the phone just for emergencies.

Arrogance will getcha

Image: Fiskars Rotary Cutter and Softtouch Scissors, designed by a team led by Jim Boda and Doug Birkholz, now of Inspire Design (image via Inspire).

I just had a nice chat with Jim Boda, who was head of R&D at Fiskars' US division in the early 90s when they developed Softtouch Scissors. Originally called the "Golden Series," the scissors were developed with the goal of making cutting easier for older users and people with manual disabilities. A spring in the scissors helps them open automatically, saving the effort and eventual discomfort of opening after each cut, while the innovative offset handles and straight bottom edge let you rest them on the table during use. Focus group feedback indicated that they would be useful and appealing to a broad range of users, and the new name reflected this comfort and ease. I see these every time I go to the fabric shop, as all the fabric measure/cutters use them.

Jim commented that, when it comes to designing tools/products, "one of the things that you really want to do is separate yourself—a lot of things can be intuitive, but in watching other people use products I find they really use them differently. We could design intuitively, based on own experiences, but when we get it wrong it's usually because of arrogance. Especially when it comes to the human body... we are all made up of different parts and use them in different ways." Thanks, Jim. He also mentioned that the US division was the first to really bring product innovation to the company-- with total market dominance in Finland, the home company didn't really understand the need-- and that US R&D helped the Finnish and British divisions set up their own design/R&D teams in the 90s. Interesting trans-Atlantic business story.

odd (and old) links about how designers try to figure out who they are designing for

- Designing for the Senior Surge Wall Street Journal shows designers at GE wearing giant rubber gloves and glasses with scratched lenses to show how they try to understand the needs of an aging population in appliances. The new features they come up with-- a faucet that taps on and off, a double oven that fits into a single-sized space and has easier to open double doors-- are dubbed "aging-friendly" but would clearly benefit anyone (the double oven also seems like an energy saver since it separates a single-meal section from a section "big enough for a 22-lb turkey").

- via treehugger way back in 2006: Eco- and UD House demonstration by Panasonic also had designers using goggles to simulate visual impairment. Design features include unified standards for color and type size to enhance usability, as well as rounded furniture edges, wide threshold-less doorways. Some of the "sophisticated digital devices" also have voice guidance-- something I wish I had to teach me how to dress my second life avatar.

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