Barbara Beskind, 90, is a designer at IDEO who works with engineers on products that improve the quality of life for older people.
NPR just posted this article about a 90-year-old woman recently hired as a designer at IDEO.
What a great idea! As designers, our job is to understand and design for our intended audience. However, older designers may have problems identifying with younger users and younger designers may not really understand what elder users are going through. As our population ages, designing for elderly eyes, hands, bodies and minds is a challenging situation.
My colleagues at Pearson Education, led by Lisa Maurer, Design Research manager, have recently implemented KidsTeam, where schoolchildren actively participate in the design and research of Pearson’s educational products.
IDEO’s hiring elderly designers takes this approach for designing for the other end of the age spectrum.
Both programs show that user-centered design and research is alive and well in the User Experience (UX) community.
Your thoughts?
I love this! Having struggled to find well-designed accessible products to meet the needs of my now late grandparents, I think it’s about time companies started recognizing the needs and contributions of this increasing segment of the population. From product design to UX design, seniors have a lot to teach us about design. I hope that I can still be working in this field when I’m 90!