The photo on the right was taken with my little tiny PowerShot, so you can tell that I gave up on the idea of doing any real photography while I was at the Aging by Design conference (I decided not to schlep both a camera and a laptop…the laptop won this time, hence this post from Waltham).
I lived and/or worked in Waltham for most of the early ’80s. It was weird to be here this time and tool around visiting past haunts. Stuff was more familiar than if I had never been, but 20-plus years had fried enough synapses that it wasn’t like I had never left :).
The conference was well worth attending. Of course there were presentations that were either more interesting and/or more relevant (your mileage may vary), but I was particularly interested in Fidelity’s report on interactive voice systems (read: call center systems, PPT). Their research formalizes some behavior we saw when testing our online membership application, so I’m definitely planning on looking up the paper they did at last summer’s UPA.
The two Mary’s did an interesting presentation on internet access and older adults (PPT). They reported on two studies (one qualitative, one quantitative) that looked at what led older adults to use the Internet. I was interested in their framework (they referenced both Erickson and Vaillant in terms of life cycle/needs in terms of adoption).
Ajit Kambril of Deloitte Research did a fascinating presentation from a marketing perspective on aging consumers, employees, and citizenry. I particularly found the first compelling as he talked about the problem with universal design…it didn’t tend to incorporate the personal relevance and emotional resonance that may well be key to Boomer use of products. Their Wealth with Wisdom (see the PDF download) report goes into a lot of detail on this subject.
On day two, Craig Vogel of the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Design Research and Innovation echoed some of this same. He talked about form plus function equaling fantasy, and the aspects of the lifestyle expectations of Boomers…as they age, their ability to be independent may suffer, but their expectations to have it all is likely to not diminish. Craig also offered an interesting take re the Boomers re Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, noting that Boomers may want to self-actualize, but they’ve also been raised to be consumers, so products that appeal to this “conscience gap” (e.g., hybrid cars) may do well with many of this demo.
Lesa Lorenzen Huber and Mark Notess from Indiana University talked about barriers to online learning (PPT), but their presentation was really about barriers to any participation. One of the aspects that I hadn’t come across in my previous research was the extent to which “time left to live” was a factor. Bill Gribbons of Bentley called this the “I’m not going to buy green bananas” concept, which says that, at some point, older adults figure that their time becomes precious enough that spending it on difficult or unrewarding tasks is a hard sell. Very interesting!
And then, in perhaps a case of bad casting (just kidding Bill!), Bill Gribbons helped close the conference with a sobering look at the issue of functional illiteracy (PPT). I was sitting there thinking about how our site is not written at a level to meet these needs, and I was thinking, well, Tom Tullis must be having the same thoughts. Universal design may be one thing, but lowest-common-denominator is another. The answer is surely more complicated than writing everything at a 3rd or 5th grade level. Or is it? I wondered to what extent this issue and plain language may overlap.
Anyways, all good stuff! The above was what I found interesting, but you should definitely browse the 2006, 2005, and 2004 programs for some very relevant presentations.
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Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! 
