Researching the Needs and Problems of Old People as the Assumptions for Specified Ergonomic Design

摘要

Rationality and effectiveness of undertaken designing activities depend on the precise recognition and analysis of the needs of potential users of the designed products or functional systems (buildings, communication lines, information, etc.). This condition is especially important in designing for the disabled people, even if the disability is called old age. Designers rarely take notice of the old people's problems with everyday activities and find them difficult to imagine. At the same time technical progress is a constant source of new stresses for the elderly. The research undertaken in order to identify and create a hierarchy of old people's needs aims at concentrating the designers activities on the most important problems of everyday life. The research was carried out in a big urban centre with regard to the specific character of social existence - living alone or with families, or in old people's homes. As a result of introductory research, a list of the most often mentioned chores of daily life was formulated (24 areas, e.g., meal preparation, shopping, the use of phone, medicines identification, dealing with problems in offices, the use of household utensils and equipment, etc.). Detailed interviews with older people enabled formulating the compound factor of the problems occurrence frequency, their rank, and how troublesome they are for the inquired people. All this was performed in order to establish the hierarchy of problem importance in specific groups. The research enabled specifying the details of many problems linked with functional processes creating the basis for formulating introductory assumptions behind the problems solution concept in the designing sphere.