We don't see much in the popular press about “transgenerational design,” nor often hear it being discussed at cocktail parties.

Yet, when introduced to a new transgenerational product or environment, most people immediately recognize the benefits—its accommodating design overcomes the myths, frustrations and stigmas of age or disability.

It’s unfortunate that those who benefit the most from transgenerational design are those who know the least about it.

An increasing number of astute global manufacturers, researchers, marketers, and design organizations are embracing the transgenerational design concept. They recognize its competitive advantage for attracting the attention—and collective buying power—of the exploding "silver market."

Benefits

Such transgenerational designs promote graceful aging, soften the impact of the aging process, extend independent living, and enhance the quality of life for all—the young, the old, the able, the disabled.

Advantages

• 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, sympathize rather than stigmatize, and innovate rather than replicate.

What It's NOT

Transgenerational design is NOT about producing more cynical "elderly housing," products for "the handicapped," or homes for "the aged." Such designs provide only the minimum required, code-compliant, adaptive "add-ons"—such as grab bars, ramps, lever faucets and raised toilet seats—which reek with "institutional," "medical," "aging," and "disability connotations.

What It IS

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

What It Does

It accommodates people of all ages and abilities through innovative, human-sensitive architecture, living spaces, appliances, transportation, household products, fixtures, and communication systems designed for safety, comfort, convenience, beauty, accessibility, clean-ability, adjust-ability, ease of use, and bodily fit— "transgenerational" features that neutralize the effects of age, impairments, or disability.

Transgenerational designs provide five essential attributes:

• USABILITY — permits us to easily obtain or use an object, service, or fa

cility and move freely and normally throughout an environmental setting.

• LEGIBILITY — provides cues that enable us to perceive out sense of place and supplies 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 those who are able-bodied.

• CONVENIENCE — convenient, handy, and appropriate use for all who would use them. This means such things as convenient use, transport, packaging, storage, operation, 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; and easy use that does not tire our muscles, or defy our dexterity—regardless of our age or ability.

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

• SUITABILITY — appropriateness of size, function, appearance, adjustability, accommodation, and symbolism.
  
• USER VALUE — infusing 'utility' with user-sensitive value-added perceptions, components, and features. User value satisfies consumers' desire by translating expectations into positive reactions, thereby maintaining self respect, extending independence, and promoting satisfaction.

Applying these principles will give your products and environments a broad 'transgenerational' appeal.

THE LAST QUARTER-CENTURY spotlighted two unresolved environmental discrimination problems—aging and disability. Each aroused a separate segment of our global conscience and sparked efforts to satisfy the swelling need for accessible housing, products, and environments—for all ages and abilities.

Aging

BY THE START OF THE 1880s, ripples of concerned awareness about population aging had begun to form.

For the first time in our planet’s history, the world contained more people aged 65 and older than the combined populations of Russia, Japan, France, Germany and Australia. Not only were older people increasing in number, they were also living longer—a prediction that a future rise in physical and sensory impairments and disabilities was inevitable, and the recognition that the design professions were facing a new challenge.

The concept of "Transgenerational Design" emerged from this growing concern and recognition. The term was coined in the mid-1980s by Syracuse University industrial design professor James J. Pirkl, FIDSA, while conducting a design-for-aging research project with gerontologist Anna L. Babic under a grant from the Administrative Office of Human Development Services, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. Their project resulted in two seminal 1988 publications:

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.

Disability

The 1970s and 80s also witnessed a parallel effort to provide accessibility and societal inclusion for people with disabilities. Attracted by a common cause, and joined by the concept of accessibility, disabled people united behind a disability rights movement to achieve equality for those who had been denied independence, autonomy and full access to society.

Their collective voices, fueling societal demands for environmental accessibility, coalesced and embraced the term, “universal design,” advanced in the mid 1980s by Ronald L. Mace, FAIA, a disabled architect from North Carolina State University. As the movement grew, its dedicated efforts propelled the passage of the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act, and in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which "prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in places of public accommodation." Both Acts led to a welcomed societal inclusion for people with disabilities. But its mandated reshaping of a broad spectrum of physical environments through governmental regulations, codes, standards and policies, impacted the building industry and architectural profession.

Problems

The Acts' access provisions, however, produced unintentional results. To solve conflicting priorities and problems, isolated pockets of academic, governmental, and private centers of influence emerged and developed alternative strategies and solutions for reaching the common goal of 'universal' accessibility. Their collaborated efforts and influence reduced public apathy and sparked professional awareness of the quiescent need to accommomdate impaired and disabled people with products and environments designed to be accessible to all ages and abilities.

Consolidation

Against this backdrop, Pirkl's third book, Transgenerational Design: Products for an Aging Population, published in 1994, enlarged upon the emerging inter-generational 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.

To the contrary, the 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."

Since the book’s publication, numerous presentations, seminars, articles, and media exposure of the Transgenerational Design concept have attracted international attention and adoption. Moreover, because its neutral and non-stigmatizing label bridges all ages and abilities, an increasing number of astute global manufacturers and research organizations are embracing 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, we can only speculate the impact of transgenerational design on the kind and scope of activities of daily living (ADL) provided by tomorrow's public and private environmental designs.

The answer will come, however, from how well tommorrow's designers unite the forms of function and beauty with human understanding and sensitivity—the essense of true professional service and responsibility.

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