Patricia Moore made life easier for the elderly.
It all started when she wondered what exactly it felt like to be old and decided to try it out. At the age of 26 she dressed like an old lady, fogged up her glasses, wrapped her limbs in splints to simulate arthritis, and wore mismatched shoes so she would have to hobble wherever she went. People totally believed it.
What she discovered was that places and people weren’t often elderly friendly. So design-savvy Patty went about fixing that. We can thank her now (and especially when we’re old) for reinventing some of our handy ergonomic kitchen utensils, and for shedding light on the idea that each person accesses the world differently.
“The ‘other’ is a critical mass. There’s definitely a sexiness to making things fit! To making them useful, safe,” Moore said in a lecture at California College of the Arts. “I don’t like focusing too much on the artifact, on the pretty object. I’m more excited about the potential to help a child who lost an arm sit and eat with his or her parents at the dining room table.”
Moore became a strong proponent for Universal Design – the idea that buildings and environments are built to be accessible to people of all ages and abilities. She says, “Universal design is driven by empathy, an understanding that one size doesn’t fill all”.
Kudos to Moore, the gal who literally put herself someone else’s shoes.
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