Geriatric Innovation

You need to read this and believe it because there is no way could anyone make it up. All the big corporations are studding seniors. Our demographics are so compelling, i.e. we have a lot of money to spend – that we are worthy of comprehensive analysis. MIT has jumped on the bandwagon with AGNES.

MIT’s Age Lab, a research center designed to innovate technologies and services for today’s increasingly numerous elderly population, created a high tech suit that’s designed to inhibit movement and sensation in the same way as, well, being 70 years old would. The suit, called the AGNES (short for Age Gain Now Empathy System), is built to help product designers better understand the physical toils of old age. Through empathy, MIT says, designers will create better products. The empathy theory is that if designers wear AGNES for a few days, they will feel what it is like to be old, and therefore will design products that are better for old people.

The AGNES project was probably funded with Obama stimulus money. What is wrong with this theory Mr. Bob? It is nonsense and proves again that academics really do work in an ivory tower. Do you want to know how to design products for old people? Ask them? They are not reluctant to talk. And there are plenty of us around to answer the questions as well as help in the product design itself. After all a lot of us were doing product design work, before we were retired, and our 401Ks need a little boost anyway. Plus we are busy solving our own aging problems with little help from MIT.

I saw an example of genuine geriatric innovation yesterday. I was riding my bike back from tennis when a person who is 81 biked up beside me. He was sitting straight up with no bent-back as is the custom with the handlebars on a normal bike. He had built an H-frame that attached to his handlebars and raised the position of his hands about 8 inches higher than the normal handlebars. This innovation enabled him to ride his bike without bending his back—which a lot of old people have trouble doing.

Hey Mr. CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, do you want to explore new products for seniors? Invite 100 seniors to your development facilities and challenge them with the task of suggesting 100 new products that would make their life easier. Ask them for product design ideas. Then, design the products and ask them to test the results. And then throw AGNES under the bus. Who better to participate in new products specially designed for old people, but “real” old people? The youngsters will get old fast enough without donning AGNES, to experience old age, and walking around empathetically.

Doubt me. Google AGNES. Look for MIT research.