Interactions - March/April 2008

EDITOR Allison Druin allisond@umiacs.umd.edu

strategy can be developed to generate broader appeal. At Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design, we recently concluded a two-year research project with GE Appliances in Lousiville, KY, that explored the attributes of current and emerging elder populations to identify opportunities to promote sustained autonomous living. What we (re)learned in the process was that most of the advantages designed to empower elders actually increased usability and appealled to a much broader audience. As noted educator and author James Pirkl describes, this is a transgenerational approach. Through our various research methods aimed at better understanding aging from an elder’s point of view, we learned that elders expressed views on features, complexity, and materials that were similar to those of much younger consumers (identified as first-time appliance buyers). So our strategy was to focus on the form language, behavior, and interaction with appliances to serve as a primer for GE designers to use as underpinnings for enhancements across their product lines. Creating a new “geriatric” line of appliances would be demeaning—no one wants to be told they’re old—but establishing new interactions that would empower elders, yet appeal to a wider audience, made a lot of sense.

Working within existing kitchen-cabinet

standards, we developed the StrikeZone concept, which defines a “right-size” approach and situates appliances in the kitchen at optimal locations for reach, access, and movement. This more advantageous configuration promotes greater access into and around each appliance and was determined by establishing a relationship of the user’s physical interaction and movement with each primary cooking/cleaning activity, as well as the relationship of the appliance form in situ within the kitchen space. The appliance forms were designed to express behavior and capabilities in simple and intuitive ways. Through observation and anecdotes, we learned that there are common human experiences with appliances; the risk is the same when reaching into a hot oven, and everyone bangs their shins on the dishwasher door. Focusing on design solutions from the elder perspective enabled a more conscious focus on enabling features that would address risk and hazardous scenarios that translated to a broader audience.

Establishing a common visual interface across all products (microwave, dishwasher, fridge, oven, cooktop, laundry pair) was incredibly important in promoting user confidence through consistent visual language and feedback. A combination of analog and digital display serves as the basis for establishing a narrative interface that