Product Design for Elderly, Using Their Formative Years, Their Age effect and the Influence of the Present

The population in Western countries is growing older. In the second part of this century, about one third of the people there will be 55 years or older. Many of them will have made a successful career and will have a lot of money to spend. This makes them an interesting target group, amongst others for product designers. At the moment older people are often approached as one big, homogeneous group. In the past this may have worked, but for the present, very critical baby boom generation, it will most likely not. They have different opinions, different requirements and do not want to be treated as one homogeneous group. Present research and product development is mainly aimed at helping people with laws, based on the idea that people become needier when they get older. For a small part of this group this is certainly true, however these laws do not come to everyone at the same time. In this paper a design method will be presented that makes it possible to design for different, elderly target groups, taking into account their formative years(between 15-25 years), the influence of their age and the present. To test the method, six designs for radios were created and discussed with members of the target group. Ten persons participated in this test; nine of them selected one of the mood boards that was created to represent their formative years. Five of them chose the design that was intended for them as their favourite.