We're Growing Older: Product Designers, Take Note!

Rows of sleek, ergonomic cable machines, a matching set of free-weight stands and platforms, and a bunch of cool new aerobic machines: bikes, treadmills, rowing machines, stair climbers—even one that mimics skate-skiing—many of them with programmable screens that let you select and pretend to cruise along through workout environment.

I've had a membership there for 30 years. I love the place, with its warm, welcoming environment that attracts people of all ages, races, abilities and income levels. I love the fact that it accomodates people with physical and cognitive disabilities.

The problem?

Despite my considerable overall strength, built during 30 years of heavy weight training, I find it painful, time-consuming, and in some instances humiliating, to use the new weight-training equipment.

Like 50 million aging Americans, I’ve got osteoarthritis, which has slowly worsened during the past couple of decades. The small joints in my thumbs, wrists and fingers scream with the pain of pushing or pulling the innocent-looking orange buttons and pull cables that adjust the machines to fit me. Adjusting the height of the racks that hold the Olympic bars in place is an agonizing task that involves pulling a pin while simultaneously lifting a heavy iron rack with one hand.

Furthermore, I have to stoop and squint to read the tiny little numbers that tell me where to plug in the pins that line up the racks that support the Olympic bars or tell the machines how many pounds to move up and down.

It’s no fun having to ask the staff (mostly fit young men) or less-disabled 20-something members for help setting up each and every station. Like many younger folks, what they believe they’re communicating politely and respectfully can come across as patronizing or cheerily dismissive, especially when delivered in a kind of slow baby-talk, as if I had a cognitive impairment.

In short, the expensive new equipment makes me feel much more disabled than I really am. I never had to ask for help setting up the old free weights and benches, since they didn’t require much effort from my small joints.

Shame on the equipment designers!

If the equipment designers had trialed their prototypes on people like me, they’d have learned dozens of ways to improve them: larger, easier-to-push buttons and pulls; big, brightly colored numbers to obviate squinting; more ways to position the hand grips, and numerous other small things.

And guess what? Changes that would make the equipment more inviting for aging arthritics would also make it more useful for pregnant women, overweight and obese people, people with developmental disabilities, oldsters improving their strength for the activities of daily living, and the folks of all ages who use the equipment for rehabilitation (e.g., injured athletes, middle-aged weekend warriors, accident victims, wounded veterans).
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The U.S. is aging rapidly—the 65-and-older population is expected to double to 70 million (one in five people) by 2030. Public health advocates rank exercise as the number one health measure that can help keep people well and healthy at any age.

Fitness-equipment designers shouldn’t postpone catering, even pandering, to this vast and growing market. In fact, designers in general are going to have to modify every aspect of our physical environments to accommodate this massive demographic shift.

The automaker Nissan has an idea that should spread to designers of all products: “a cumberbome, strap-on  ‘aging suit,’ that gives young auto designers the feel of driving with a bulging belly, arthritic joints and shaky balance. The suit—including goggles that distort color and mimic the effects of cataracts—is used to simulate the physical effects of aging as designers work to make future vehicles safer and more comfortable.

But give us some style! Most of the stuff I see in those independent-living catalogues purveying household items for people with disabilities looks designed for people of the WW II generation.

Boomers may be aging, but they don't want to look or feel old. They aren’t going to go en masse for stuff that screams “geezer-gear.”

So, designers, make things and create environments with the versatility to work for people of all ages and abilities, but make it elegant, cool, and hip, and ring up the profits.