Want Effective Age-In-Place Design? Ask Us.

By Karen and Erica

Many of us expect to spend the last decades of our lives living where we want to live, in homes where we have lived for decades, or in homes where we have always fantasized about living. But we need homes that will work for us. We must to be involved in their design—design that will allow us to be comfortable for future decades.

Many homes were not built with that in mind, but now that healthy longevity is real, and many of us will live into our 90s or 100s in relative good trim, the market is waking up.

What is aging-in-place exactly? If you are like the majority of Americans you want to continue living at home in a familiar environment throughout your maturing years. Aging-in-place means living in your home safely, independently and comfortably, regardless of age or ability level. It addresses the need to remodel existing homes and design new homes, so that people can age in place and not have to move to assisted-living facilities as they age. Since the vast majority of homes we live in are not well designed for this, a movement in residential construction has sprung up to meet this new consumer demand.

It may sound unnerving to consider preparing for physical limitations that may come with age, but realism is a good thing, and age is not the only cause of such limitations.

Too early to think this applies to you? Consider how many folks struggle with bouts of arthritis at an early age. If you fell and broke a leg, how easy would it be to get up and downstairs in your house? Perhaps you have aging parent or relative who is facing these challenges who may need to move in with you.

Should you want to future-fit your current home, one source of assistance is a Certified Aging In Place Specialist. Such a specialist is trained to advise on specific strategies for specific rooms—bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, closets—like those addressed in this article or this list. Suggestions include getting your possessions organized, assuring that rooms are well lit, removing loose rugs, installing grab bars and so on.

Of course, a home is much more than a utilitarian space. Creating a safe environment that the future tenant considers hideous, or inhospitable, won’t work. Aesthetics are critical, and individual. Home design therefore must take account much more than safety. The idea that older people value aesthetics is also a new thought. Better late than never…

The MIT AgeLab offers these principles to govern development of an attractive, safe home:

1. Identity: Residents look for their home to reflect their identity, including their personal history, their memories, their family dynamics, and their aesthetic preferences.

2. Safety: A home is a safe and familiar place—both physically and emotionally. A home compensates for the loss of senses such as hearing, vision, and balance as well as other aging related changes—it is the place where we should feel most skilled, capable, and sheltered from danger.

3. Duality: a home should have a dual relationship with its residents: it should both give and take. A home that only takes—demanding constant work, care, and maintenance—can exhaust its residents and fail to provide comfort. A home that only gives—requiring no input of energy from the person who resides in it—becomes unfamiliar and alienating. A home should offer its residents feedback that enhances their sense of purpose.

4. Connection: A home should facilitate and enhance connections: Connections between residents, connections between residents and their community, connections between residents and the outside natural world.

5. Control: A home should provide its residents the sense that they are in control, and that they can be independent. A home should be easily managed, and everything should work as expected.

6. Comfort: A home should give more energy that it takes. A home is efficient. A home is multifunctional. When needed, assistance is personal and reachable.

Few of us expect to be hampered by age, but designing spaces that incorporate age friendly architecture makes sense. Such designs protect those who do develop physical or mental issues, without sacrificing aesthetics.

Celebrating older people involves acknowledging and appreciating their different viewpoints and parts in the society. It is important that they are part of the decision-making bodies, community actions so that they remain part of the society who are included, valued and respected. By embracing their wisdom as well as experience, we create a better place for engaging all age groups.

The diverse housing options which are tailored to the needs of old people are given precedence in age-friendly neighborhood planning. Making them convenient, walkable locations in addition to having a necessary socio-cultural space for supporting routine interests like health care makes these places facilitate daily activities.

Designing age-friendly homes focuses on creating environments that promote health, active living, and social connection. Key design elements include providing appropriate storage spaces, ensuring accessible controls and easy access throughout the home, and maximizing daylight and views to enhance mental and physical well-being. These homes are tailored to adapt to the changing needs of older adults, supporting independence and comfort as they age.

Creating a smart home also seems like a good idea, but may not be so easy. One of us recently stayed in an ultra smart hotel room. Screens plastered every wall; a very large screen and several smaller ones took up space by the bed; a noisy toilet clanked its seat up when a guest was ten feet away, and doing anything required study of electronics. No thanks. But some smart devices probably make sense for us. Here’s an overview evaluating devices based on qualities such as simplicity of operation; integration of different devices; and safety enhancement.

One key point: the expected user must play a role in the design of every part of a home—including tech. It is well accepted that digital technology has the potential for enhancing life as one ages, but a recent paper noted the importance of including people who might be expected to use tech in any serious effort to research or design a tech installation.

Digital technology holds a promise to improve older adults’ well-being and promote ageing in place. However, there seems to be a discrepancy between digital technologies that are developed and what older adults actually want and need. Ageing is stereotypically framed as a problem needed to be fixed, and older adults are considered to be frail and incompetent. Not surprisingly, many of the technologies developed for the use of older adults focus on care. The exclusion of older adults from the research and design of digital technology is often based on such negative stereotypes. In this opinion article, we argue that the inclusion rather than exclusion of older adults in the design process and research of digital technology is essential if technology is to fulfill the promise of improving well-being. We emphasize why this is important while also providing guidelines, evidence from the literature, and examples on how to do so. We unequivocally state that designers and researchers should make every effort to ensure the involvement of older adults in the design process and research of digital technology. Based on this paper, we suggest that ageism in the design process of digital technology might play a role as a possible barrier of adopting technology.

The paper bemoaned the fact that the market, in that case people 80+, is growing but overlooked, a point we have often made about our own cohort of women over 65.

First, there seems to be an apparent unexploited business opportunity to extend the focus to age groups (primarily the 80+ population) that are growing in numbers and needs and that have so far been neglected on the basis of assumptions that this age group is less capable of using or not interested in [Digital Techno;ogy]. There seems to be a lack of marketing research on older adults, as well as an anti-ageing trend in the expression of the marketing discourse. Therefore, as the use of DT is being increasingly proposed in health and social care of older adults but designers of DT are still ill-equipped to design for this age group, engaging older adults as partners in design and research is a necessity to overcome these barriers.

Second and more importantly, there seems to be the missed opportunity for DT to substantially improve the quality of life of older adults who are living longer and who are experiencing multiple life changes and social isolation with the resultant negative consequences of depression and ill-health. Several issues need to be considered, namely gaining a better understanding of factors that influence the acceptance of DT by older adults as a heterogeneous group, understanding their unique perspective that can be different than other stakeholders’ perspectives, understanding their motivations and needs and gaining evidence of how DT can improve the lives of older people.

It is wonderful that we all now have options that will allow us to live in places we love, with independence. It is gratifying that the world is starting to see that we are here, we are a market, and those designing spaces for our futures are beginning to listen to us.

And we hope everyone involved remembers that together we will be designing for all of our future selves.