designing appliances for older persons-老年人

老年人设计

Development of guidelines for designing appliances for older persons

Peter G Higgins * and Adam Glasgow

Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn 3122, Australia

Abstract. The ability of older adults to use a domestic appliance depends on their comprehension of the appliance’s operation. This may depend on transfer of understanding from similar, more familiar technology. While this may assist their interaction with the new device, it may constrain the discovery of new functionality not represented in the familiar technology, and, there-by, constrain the discovery of advanced functionality. Older adults experience declining cognitive abilities associated with attention, perceptual encoding, and memory (cueing and recall). Designing appliances to extend cognitive abilities provides opportunity to prolong functional independence. Concepts from cognitive psychology, human factors, and gerontology are reviewed to explain age-related behavior towards technology to support innovative product development of technologies for older adults.

Keywords: cognitive impairment, domestic appliances, elderly, gerontechnology, human-machine interface, mental model

*

Corresponding author. E-mail: phiggins@swin.edu.au

1. Introduction

With age, psychomotor, perceptual, and cognitive abilities decline. Personal independence depends on the ability of seniors to perform instrumental activi-ties of daily living (IADL). Self-reliance depends on their capacity to use domestic appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, stoves and heaters. Seniors may lack confidence in dealing with new devices: perplexity replacing familiarity. Their in-ability to adapt leads to increased dependency on family members, friends, and service providers. Where support is scant, seniors may be impelled to move into residential care.

Developing new appliance technologies that com-pensate for declining abilities may be a means of sustaining self-sufficiency, thereby delaying admit-tance to residential care. Integrating behavioral sci-ence and engineering in a context of product design allows designers to create technologies for support-ing and extending declining abilities.

While technology innovation has extended life-span, there has been little effort in developing tech-nologies that compensate for declining abilities. Nonetheless, some general guidelines have been de-veloped by Schiebe,r and more recently by Pak and McLaughlin, for designing products for ageing users [18,25].

D isparity between extending lifespan and declin-ing cognitive abilities highlights the need for research into developing technology to sustain independence during cognitive decline [32

]. Age-related declines in cognitive abilities are well-documented [25,27]. Older adults experience cognitive decline in attention, perceptual encoding, memory (cueing and recall), and self-efficacy. Cog-nitive decline can weaken learning and skill acquisi-tion associated with fluid intelligence, spatial ability, perceptual speed, and working memory. There is evidence to show that even healthy older adults ex-hibit impairment on cognitive tests [1]. Carlson et al. found that executive tests of planning, organization and flexibility to be selectively associated with per-formance of IADLs [3].

The focus in this paper is the relationship between cognitive impairment and the features of appliance design. D esigning appliances to extend cognitive

Work 41 (2012) 333-339

DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0178-333IOS Press

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