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MIT's AgeLab Designs For Lifestyles Of The Future

Joseph Coughlin created MIT's AgeLab nearly 10 years ago to help businesses tailor products and services to the world's older folks, Hiawatha Bray reports, and his vision is nothing like the youth-obsessed fantasies of TV and movies. In reality, tomorrow belongs to the old. "It's about designing the lifestyle of the future," says the 47-year-old Coughlin.

Making products specifically for old people can be commercial suicide because "the young won't use it and the old will run away," Coughlin says. But features like more readable labels or packages that are easier to open are helpful to younger customers as well.

In one corner of the lab is a mockup of a self-scanning device, already used in supermarkets like Stop & Shop, which attaches to a user's shopping cart. The AgeLab version would read medical data from a "smart card" carried by a shopper. If customers scan an item that's bad for their health, the scanner issues a warning and suggests safer alternatives.

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