It's not that I don't have
very close friends with prostate problems, knee replacements and 401(K)-depeletion disorders but -- even as a centrist member of the boomer generation -- I'm aghast
to read that appliance manufacturers are pandering to our looming impairments and disabilities.
We stopped being the Pepsi Generation when the Pepsi started going straight to our paunches,
but are we really so paunchy as to need grab bars in the bathroom that will support 350 pounds? Are we really so forgetful as to require glass-top stoves designed to prevent boil-overs?
"This population is far more demanding and will refocus designers" on individual consumers," Joe Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab, tells the
Journal's
Paul Glader. I can't argue with him. But we are as vain as we are fussy, are we not? Are we ready to buy dryers that have pedestals that reduce stooping when we pull our gym shorts out? What will that
do to our self-esteem?
Glader takes us inside an "empathy session" at General Electric's design headquarters. "Industrial-design intern Joanie Jochamowitz, 22, wraps her knuckles with
athletic tape and wears blue rubber gloves to simulate arthritis. She shoves cotton balls in her ears to simulate hearing loss, dons special glasses to simulate macular degeneration and puts dried
corn kernels in her loafers to simulate aches and pains," Glader writes.
Jochamowitz concludes that she doesn't want to get old. One word: "Oy.
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