Seminar on Ageing
On Friday the 29th of May 2009 The Challenges of Ageing seminar was held at Massey University's Wellington campus. The seminar explored the challenges to all aspects of society of successfully responding to the requirements of an increasing aged population and their changing lifestyle. The seminar was sponsored by The New Zealand Ergonomics Society, Affect - the centre for affective design research and Massey University.
The first speaker was Professor Sara Czaja. Sara holds professorial appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences and Industrial Engineering. She is the director of the Centre on Research and Education for Ageing and Technology Enhancement at the University of Miami School of Medicine; Co-Director for the Centre of Adult Development and Ageing at the University of Miami School of Medicine; President of the Applied Ergonmics Group Inc., Buffalo New York. She has published extensively on the applications of ergonomics and human factors engineering to issues of ageing and the consequences for design and technology.
Please click here to access a recording of Professor Sara Czaja's talk.
The second speaker was Marc Bailey who is the Director and Urban Planner for Boffa Miskell in Wellington. His talk, Socially Sustainable Living Environments, was centred around successfully responding to the requirements of an increasing aged population and their changing lifestyle as challenging design from detailed human scale considerations through to larger urban growth thinking. Design and master-planning communities - considering location, context, connections, social interactions, community mix, community support and activities - were case studied with examples from New Zealand.
Please click here to access a recoding of Marc Bailey's talk.
The third speaker, Janet Turnbull, a geriartrician spoke on managing the very frail vs managing the fit elderly.
Please click here to access a recording of Janet Turnbull's talk.
The final speaker for the day was Lyn Garrett, a Research Associate of Affect. His talk entitled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Product Design for the Ageing focused on Design as involving intent, setting out with an aim. He spoke on how in practice, there is a subtext to 'design' that implies it is 'good'. Good design solves everybody's issues/problems, however, accommodating an ageing population has produced mixed results. A presentation of case study examples was discussed.
Please click here to access a recording of Lyn Garrett's talk.
