Why "Transgenerational" Design?

THE SECRET IS OUT. Across the globe astute manufacturers, researchers, marketers, and design organizations have discovered—and embrace—the transgenerational design concept.

Still, we don't read much in the popular press about “transgenerational design,” nor hear it discussed very often at cocktail parties. But most people, when introduced to a "transgenerational" product or environment, immediately recognize its benefits.

As global competition intensifies, they recognize the competitive advantage of attracting the attention—and collective buying power—of the world's exploding "silver market" of 506,000,000 aging consumers.

Transgenerational design offers that competitive advantage!

What Are the Advantages?

QUITE SIMPLY, "transgenerational design" promotes graceful aging, softens the impact of the aging process, extends independent living, and enhances the quality of life for all—the young, the old, the able, the disabled.

Transgenerational products and environments:

• Serve the widest range of ages and abilities
• Bridge the transitions across life's stages
• Respond to the widest range of individual differences and abilities
• Offer a variety of means to accomplish one's activities of daily living
• Maintain one's dignity and sense of self worth
• Enable personal and social interaction
• Support intergenerational relationships

In short, transgenerational designs accommodate rather than discriminate and innovate rather than replicate.

What It's NOT

TRANSGENERATIONAL DESIGN is NOT about producing products for "the aged," "elderly housing," or homes for "the handicapped."

And it's NOT about designing "accessible" products or environments that mindlessly conform to bureaucratically imposed principles, standards, dimensions and diagramatically mandated "solutions."

Designs produced with code-compliant concentration usually result in starkly functional, impersonal products and environments that lack human sensitivity, interest, and appeal (i.e., grab bars, threshold ramps, hand rails, door knob extenders, bathtub handles, raised toilet seats), which reek with "institutional," "medical," "aging," and "disability" connotations.

Transgenerational designs sympathize rather than stigmatize.

What It IS

Transgenerational design IS about designing ALL consumer products and residential environments to be accommodating—and attractive—to the widest possible spectrum of those who would use them—the young, the old, the able, the disabled—without penalty to any group.

It's more than just functional design accommodation based on mandated professional and governmental standards. It also considers the users' individuality, aesthetic sensitivity, social stature, and self respect.

Transgenerational designs innovate rather than replicate!

What It DOES

Transgenerational design neutralizes the discriminating effects of aging, physical and sensory impairments, or disabilities.

It appeals to and accommodates people of all ages and abilities through innovative designs of human-sensitive household products, architecture, living spaces, transportation, and communication systems.

Transgenerational designs emphasize safety, comfort, convenience, beauty, accessibility, clean-ability, adjust-ability, ease of use, and bodily fit — features that extends one's independence, enhances one's lifesyle, and reinforces one's dignity and self-respect!

Transgenerational designs sympathize rather than stigmatize!

Benefits and Principles

Transgenerational design delivers five essential benefits:

• USABILITY — permits us to easily obtain or use an object, service, or facility and move freely and normally throughout an environmental setting.

• LEGIBILITY— offers cues that enable us to perceive our sense of place and provides messages of information, orientation, direction, and differences.

• ACCESSIBILITY — permits us to easily access and use an object, service, or facility regardless of our age or ability.

• ADAPTABILITY — determines ease of use and range of fit and adjustability offered by a product or environment.

• COMPATABILITY — demands that artifacts and spaces be yielding, tolerant, unassertive, and amenable to our functional limitations.
  
  
  

• SAFETY — freedom from danger, injury, or damage under reasonable conditions by all who may be expected to handle, use, or operate them. Transgenerational designs anticipate a wide variety of physical and sensory impairments, providing safe, supporting features—even before they may be needed.

• COMFORT — freedom from disturbing, painful, or stigmatizing forms or features. Transgenerational designs provide physical and sensory comfort for those with impairments as well as the able-bodied.

• CONVENIENCE — convenient, handy, and appropriate use for all who would use them—This means convenient use, transport, packaging, storage, operatton, cleaning and repair.

• EASE OF USE  — simple, uncomplicated, and easy to use. Designs should offer readable and understandable instructions and directions, simple operations, and logical controls that do not confound our intelligence. Such designs do not tire our muscles or defy our dexterity—regardless of our age or ability.

• ERGONOMIC FIT  — physical fit and sensory accommodation for the widest possible range of appropriate human dimensions. Ergonomic designs recognize that while our bodily dimensions and abilities reach their full limits during our late teens and early twenties, they also diminish as we age.

• SUITABILITY — appropriate size, function, appearance, adjustability, accommodation, and symbolism suitable for the widest spectrum of anticipated users.

• USER VALUE — infusing 'utility' with user-sensitive value-added perceptions, components, and features. User value satisfies consumers' desire by translating expectations into positive reactions, thus maintaining self respect, extending independence, and promoting satisfaction.
  

Products and environments designed using these principles have broad 'transgenerational' appeal.

Origin and History

THE LAST QUARTER-CENTURY spotlighted two unresolved environmental discrimination problems—disability and aging.

Each problem aroused a separate segment of our global conscience and sparked efforts to satisfy the swelling need for accessible housing, products, and environments that are usable by, and attractive to, people of all ages and abilities.

Disability Rights Movement

THE MILESTONE DECADES of the1970s and 80s witnessed an historic effort to achieve equality by providing long-denied independence, autonomy, and full access to society for people with disabilities. The ongoing struggle by people with disabilities to gain full citizenship is an important part of the American heriage.

By the 1950s, more and more people were surviving injuries and diseases that were fatal prior to the 20th-century's advances in biotechnical medicine. Efforts by the growing population of military veterans and young adults to participate fully in society gained momentum.

Disabled people have historically been forced into dependency relying on others to speak for them, label them, and take care of them. Responding during the early 1970s, those with disabilities began forming loose communities, coming together in centers for independent living.

As early as October 20, 1979 — linked by the common cause of achieving "equality for everyone"— the nascent disability rights movement strengthened its determination and created a "Disabled Peoples' Civil Rights Day Rally."

Seeking independence, autonomy, and full access to society, disabled people strengthened their determination to not only overcome prejudice, but also the physical environmental barriers, which llmited their access to employment and restricted their activities of daily living.

The strength of their collective demands for environmental accessibility sparked a societal awakening, modified the mind-set of government units, and helped forge a historic disability rights movement.

As the movement grew, its dedicated efforts fueled the passage of two milestone acts of federal legislation:

• The Title VIII amendment of the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act, which "prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin," and...
  
  
• 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), intends to "provide aclear and comprehensive mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities."

The introduction of both Acts led to welcomed societal inclusion for people with disabilities. But the Acts' mandated but well-intended access provisions, governmental regulations, codes, standards and policies for reshaping a broad spectrum of physical environments, produced unintentional results—particularly within the the building industry and architectural profession.

The laws' legal pressure slowly increased accessibilitiy by forcing fundamental changes and additions to the nation's architectural and public environments. Mandated counter heights and hall widths, ramps, hand rails, and grab bars quickly became familiar items.

Unfortunately, while accommodating the limitations of physical disabilities, their stark, functional appearance soon became a visual icon for disability—their stark, functional appearance becoming the stigma of handicpped.

During this same start-of-the-1980s period, ripples of concerned awareness about population aging had also begun to form.

Not only were older people increasing in number, they were also living longer—a prediction that a future rise in the number of physical and sensory impairments and disabilities was inevitable—and an early signal that the design professions would face a growing new challenge.

The concept and term, "Transgenerational Design," emerged from this growing recognition and concern, coined in the mid-1980s by Syracuse University industrial design professor James J. Pirkl, FIDSA.

Working with gerontologist Anna L. Babic, two seminal 1988 publications resulted from Pirkl's Design-for-Aging research project funded by a grant from the Administrative Office of Human Development Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC:

1. Guidelines and Strategies for Designing Transgenerational Products: A Resource Manual for Industrial Design Professionals, and
   
   
2. Guidelines and Strategies for Designing Transgenerational Products: An Instructor's Manual, distributed to all U.S. industrial design schools and programs accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD).

In addition to providing specialized information about the realities of human aging, each manual contained a detailed set of design guidelines and strategies for accommodating limitations and changing abilities in vision, hearing, touch, and mobility—which lead to impairments and disabilities affecting people of all ages and abilities.

Consolidation

Against this backdrop, Pirkl's third book, Transgenerational Design: Products for an Aging Population, published in 1994, articulated the emerging need for designing consumer products that accommodated people across the spectrum of age and ability.

The transgenerational concept contrasted sharply with universal design's founding focus on achieving architectural and environmental accessibility through mandated standards.

In contrast, Pirkl's book promoted a new 'transgenerational' message: "Make products and environments compatible with those physical and sensory impairments associated with human aging and which limit major activities of daily living."

Over the years, the book has had a profound effect. Attracting world wide attention, recognition, and adoption, it continues to source numerous citations, presentations, seminars, thesises, book chapters, and articles about the concept and benefits of Transgenerational Design.

Because this neutral and non-stigmatizing label bridges all ages and abilities, an increasing number of astute global manufacturers and research organizations embrace the ‘transgenerational’ design concept, recognizing its competitive advantage for attracting the attention—and collective buying power—of the exploding aging market.

Conjecture

AS WE ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM, one can only speculate the impact that transgenerational design will have on tomorrow's products and environments.

The answer, of course, will be determined, not only by the demands of the marketplace, but also the degree of societal sensitivity demonstrated by the fruits of tomorrow's designers.

In the end, howsever, successful solutions will only be achieved by uniting those forms of function and beauty that accommodate the widest range of ages and abilities within the vast spectrum of human needs—the essense of professional design responsibility and service .

Are we up to the challenge?

Click HERE to obtain permission to reuse our copyrighted content.