A week of In-Depth Interviews
Along with out-of-college stakeholders, we also interviewed two professors at School of Design, who worked on the domain of Aging in Place. Our interviews with Bruce Hanington and Mark Baskinger provided us a mixture of academic/real-world insights, which sat between the fields of industrial design and psychology.
Interview at the Moon Room: Mark Baskinger
To get insights about how important is the tangibility important for the elderly, we interviewed Mark Baskinger, who is an associate professor at CMU School of Design with interest areas such as the language of designed artifacts, inclusive/universal design, visual “noise” in product design, tangible interaction, UX, and methodologies of visualization.
We started with their work with GE on how to foster autonomy through house appliances for elderly to enable them aging in place. He walked through the whole project and shared with us the design decisions behind the concepts that they suggest. From this part of the interview, our takeaways are;
- Forms of the products could be more expressive; beverage zone — easier for lifting
- Consider walkers or wheelchair users, assistive devices in designing.
- Make things physically accessible without additional effort such the strike zone.
- Make things for all ages, not for a specific age period.
- Show only necessary information both in physical and digital.
- Specifically interactions elements that are flat are very hard to use for elderly, although they allow to clean easily.
- Tell a story from the interface. Divide hard tasks into steps.
- Focus on how to foster their independency. What are the complex system that can be simplify? (ex. laundry machine, car driving)
- Play to their strengths, cognitively engaged, enough texture tangibility.
- The “ING” of it, not about washer or dryer, it’s about washing your clothes, cooking your food, etc.
- What was the importance of tactility and aging?
- They lose tactile feedback.
-The idea of a possession, there is security in tangible. Thing is real,
concept is not real yet…until made into a thing.
- Physical cannot go away. - What are some benefit/pitfall to bringing VR/AR to aging population?
- Not sure about VR, don’t want to wear it all the time
- Social Acceptability of HMD: Kid with google glass — no one would talk to him as he wore it. Made him super human.
- AR — totally different, you are grounded in the physical world. Seen, worn, physical Microsoft lab, ever surface is microsoft surface, putting screens everywhere. Nice narrative, you go in and kids call grandma, they call her on skype, story time incorporated with the system, a sense of drama and theater to it all. Bad side, it takes us out of our imagination. Movie and car scene — you start to put yourself in that place, empathy almost. - Making something so immersive could desensitize you.
- Capturing memories, and narrative of everyday life.
- At what point is the reality computationally enabled. Glass wall, it’s not a matter of virtual and physical. But working together, the physical is the digital. How do you get information, does your floor tell you the weather when you get out (old homes can tell you the temp outside). How do you connect with the greater context? More visceral ways to do tactile, not just haptics.
Interview with Bruce Hanington
Our interview series continued with CMU Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Bruce Hanington, who is an expert at human-centered design and design research. Bruce’s past projects include work with General Electric’s Appliance division designing human-centered appliances, co-facilitated with Mark Baskinger, and research for Johnson & Johnson on design opportunities to enhance prescription skin care compliance among teens.
During our interview, Bruce emphasized once more that the elderly are diverse and sometimes they are not aware their level of abilities. He explained us why he brings the geriatric training to the undergraduate students. He said that training course is empathic, tangibly in other person’s shoes. It allows students to go through all of the senses, and learn about what’s the difference between aging deficits and other non-aging related deficits through simulation. Another reason that he pursues this course is to show students how world perceive if they are “disabled”.
On the other hand, large portion of our conversation was about aging and independence. Our related takeaways are:
- Mixed Reality may be valuable in transitional moments such as moving out, banning from driving etc.
- Memory back, feel more comfortable in different places, connecting to past
- In care homes, all you necessarily have in common is age and inability to care for self
- Extreme situation such as loss of their partner/friends. How can we mitigate big shift in their life?
- Precipitating events that cause aging, someone has to intervene, small things happen
- People have had lives and different experiences.
