At the San Francisco offices of the global design firm IDEO, overlooking the blue expanse of San Francisco Bay, 150 people spend each workday bettering how we live by re-thinking everyday tangibles like IKEA kitchens, Tempur-Pedic mattresses, and, years ago, Crest toothpaste tubes. More recently, though, IDEO has started to think more widely about how we might engineer large cultural shifts in areas that aren’t traditionally thought of as “designable”—how we approach topics like religion, aging, and even death. One recent Wednesday morning, a small huddle of people that included industrial designers, mechanical engineers, and roboticists stood at a long, narrow conference table to present a series of prototypes to designer Barbara Beskind. They wanted her feedback on how to make a robot more accessible to those with vision and hearing impairment. As Beskind carefully examined the models, intended for use in health care, the other designers hovered, watching her for signs of approval.
[For more of this story, written by Bonnie Tsui, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an.../the-aging-advantage]
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