A significant point to begin with when considering older people is the heterogeneity or dissimilarity between older people. Essentially the only thing that binds older people together as a group is the fact that they have all lived through similar historic life events (such as wars etc). True there are medical/physical changes that occur with age but their effect is demonstrably different between individuals within the older population. In the course of my research work, I have encountered women in their nineties that have more energy than me, as well as people in their twenties that have less energy than me. Some people are fitter others less fit, some bigger, some smaller.. tall.. short etc.

Traditionally this is when I should launch into a spiel about the fact that older people are forgetful, fall over, have poor eyesight, lose their hearing, etc but although many older people do possess some of these impairments and might have a predisposition for one of them, these are stereotypes. To design for older people requires that you have real older people to design for. You require a small group, under ten ideally, to use as the test group. This should consist of as many diverse people as you can get, with as many impairments as possible. This makes designing very hard but very true. In the process of the design using your group you will find that it might be impossible for your design to meet all the needs of the small group, in which case it is essential you make a choice, or the group makes the choice, of what are the main criteria that the design is supposed to be for.

By eliminating certain elements, you focus the design clearly whilst being aware of its limitations. Therefore instead of the design being marketed as a panacea, suitable for all, it is marketed at the exact group it was designed for. As a consequence, other people, not from this group might also find that they can benefit from the design, in which case this is great, but still the design should be marketed in the original fashion until the new group has under gone a full evaluation to prove that it does meet their needs. Most often, the design will not, and will require a tweak of so before it successfully accomplishes what it is required to do.

Using ethnographic techniques such as cultural probes, allows the users (the older people) to have their say at all points throughout the design cycle, and at each iteration. The design therefore is not an abstract conception made concrete, rather it is a solidly predefined and pretested unit, for which the limitations are already explicitly derived.

In employing 'smart' technology, it is often the case that people will assume that a person will require a certain device because of their age or impairment without consulting the person themselves or really thinking through the consequences of the device being used in reality. Consequently, I spend a lot of time working with people to stop this happening in the future. Part of the initial impetus for MDDS or DTA was derived from the amount of incorrectly ordered technologies that I have had to rework so that they can be used by the person who requires them. Moreover it is really important that the technology is considered in relation to the person. A classic illustration of what I mean is the use of pressure pads to determine when a person gets out of bed. These use to be used regularly, but thankfully are less common in good designs, because what you can find is the person getting out of bed will change the way they do this and get out from the other side. In one instance, I remember, a gentleman had pressure pads on both sides of the bed, so he made sure he got out at the bottom of the bed.

The stories that I could relate are many.... But the point is to consider how the person wants to use the space and how the technology will effect them using this space and enhance their experience and quality of life.