Elder Experience Lab Update: A New View of the Personal Care Experience

Melissa Withers
January 29, 2009

Earlier this winter BIF’s Elder Experience Lab team set out to better understand the experience of personal care for elders. In Phase I, our design observations revealed that personal care routines were especially challenging for even the most able elders, and that the experience needs to be fully redesigned.

Our work began with a series of design workshops wherein the elders were free to act like design students, with no wrong questions and no bad ideas. Needing assistance with showering was a hot topic among elders at these workshops. Very few elders in assisted living shower without assistance. Just maneuvering in the bathroom with a walker or wheelchair was exhausting…forget the actual shower process itself.

Mary is one of the few elders in assisted living who showers without an aid. Although she initially reported that showering was easy, her commentary during a walk through of the showering process with our team, and as well as in corresponding interviews, suggests the experience is a great challenge.

Outputs from this exercise are invaluable as the Elder Experience Lab design team and our partners begin to work towards redesigning the bathroom space and the personal care experience. Needing assistance with showering was a topic that generated many comments. Though the residents felt that aides do a great job helping, the mechanics of having one person in the shower while trying to keep the other from getting drenched was very difficult.

Other problems that were noted included the lack of holders to place soap, shampoos, or other products in the showers and sinks - something commonplace in many bathrooms but a particularly acute problem in small bathrooms that many elders have and sometimes need to share. The residents also spoke of the difficulties of showering while sitting down, especially when using a hand-held shower. It's hard enough hanging on to a wet, slippery hand shower while wrestling with the hose. Imagine having to hold it in one hand while holding onto a grab bar in the other in order to maintain balance. Certainly makes it pretty difficult to take a relaxing shower.

Even just maneuvering in the bathroom when needing to use a walker or a wheelchair pointed out the fact that many bathrooms were really not designed with the needs of this specific population in mind.The space itself was re-envisioned, prompting questions like “if we are meant to shower sitting down, why do we still have shower stalls which suggest upright use?” The shower structure should be completely redesigned for a seated user and the independent shower head should accommodate weakened grips of users.

The space around the sink also needs radical rethinking, as became evident when almost every participant admitted that they abandoned their wheelchair or walker to clamber around the bathroom on their own.This creates enormous risk of falling but comes out of the unmanageability of a movement aid in the space, as evidenced by the fact that a walker or wheelchair cannot fit under the sink and must be awkwardly put aside. What if the sink allowed walkers under it and was organically reshaped to avoid reaching on the users part?

These and many more concepts were discussed. It was clear that once the residents were given examples and comfort around design solutions, the floodgates opened and ideas came rushing in. Active engagements of elders in the lab and design process continues to be one of the most unique and compelling components of the Elder Experience Lab platform.