Making all this stimulus and research material available offers youthful designers an opportunity to gain an insight into important future consumer issues. Students are able to develop ideas about how products and services might look and function in the future and the collaboration with U3A offers a swift feedback loop that furthers understanding of older consumers and improves the quality ofideas and design solutions. Poorly presented information, hard to open packaging, inconsiderate graphics and so on all send out unfriendly messages that are bad for business and reinforce social stereotypes. Thoughtful, considerate, inclusive design can in most cases deal with these issues by making environments, products and services work better for people of all ages and abilities, broadening the accessibility and hence the appeal and profitability of goods and services of all kinds. For example, if we add to the 2.8 million wheelchair users in Europe the 45 million people who walk with some difficulty, accessibility takes on considerable economic significance. Designs which exclude such people will effectively create the conditions we fear: a growing mass of old dependent people soaking up limited welfare resources.
There is a strong convergence between the needs and aspirations of older people and the commercial interests of manufacturers, retailers and service providers. Older people command substantial wealth and are increasingly prepared to spend it on things which offer real improvements in the quality of their lives. Just as older people measure themselves in terms of what they can do, not what they cannot do, it is important that products and services assist them in maintaining their vitality and interest in life.
In addition, the goal of remaining independent in one's own home brings with it the need to make adaptations and replace appliances, fixtures, fittings and furnishings with more suitable items. Beyond that, health care and self-help will assume greater importance. New technologies offer the possibility of delivering a wide range of services to older people and of older people developing their own networks of care, support and exchange. These factors offer the potential to unlock some of the substantial wealth now controlled by older people. By creating new and appropriate goods and services, European designers and manufactures can gain a significant lead as the older consumer market takes off around the world.
The shift from young to old societies is well advanced but we are ill Prepared for it and resist this new reality when we should embrace it: this is holding back important and necessary economic and social developments. We are living out the greatest human success story ever but will not benefit from it until we break through the age barrier of our prejudices. My suggestion is that the best way to do this lies in discovering a new continuity between youth and age and by encouraging people of different ages to work together towards a better understanding ofeach other. It is our future after all and ifwe can all work together I am sure we can make it a future worth growing old in.
Roger Coleman, Director, DesignAge, Royal College of Art, London
Delivered to the Society on 12 March 1997, with Sir Peter Ustinov CBE in the Chair. Sponsored by the Design Council as part of Design in Education Week 1997. This published text is a synopsis of the lecture: a tape recording is availablefrom the RSA Lectures Office, price £5 (inc. VAT).