GUIDELINES FOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS TO DESIGN OBJECTS THAT ARE EASILY ACCESSIBLE FOR OLDER ADULTS.

Abstract

South Africa’s population is aging rapidly and as people get older, they start to suffer from age-related disabilities such as sight impairment, lack of muscle strength and mobility. Senior citizens play a vital role in society: some of them are still income earning and supporting their families while many are the primary caregivers and housekeepers in their families. The aim of this research was to identify what age-related disabilities these seniors had and the obstacles these caused while interacting with daily objects. The end goal was to create guidelines for designers to use in order for products to be designed for the improvement of senior citizens’ quality of life. Through context mapping, the research method using generative techniques and the mind-set that everyone is creative, seniors participated in a collaborative design research. This brought about insights that contributed to drawing up the guidelines.Through a generative session on the redesign of a product, unexpected data resulted in a solution that would not have been achieved if the user was not put at the centre of the design research.Guidelines that are useful for designers appear in other literature as discussed in this report, but the key insight is that designers should set their egos aside and allow the user to be the expert in order to produce relevant and valuable results.