Designers can really count

I found a brilliant article written by Roger Coleman from the Royal College of Art about design and older people. He looks at a wide selection of products from the toothpaste tube, pedal bins, razors, the twingo, hair dryers, handles, knobs, toilets, taps to name but a few! And it made me realise as I read his brilliant article how diverse a designers brief can actually be and how vital that we understand the consumers we are designing for. This article mainly focuses on practical design and one of the aspects I found so interesting was that in developing a product with a target audience of an "older" person the design also had more general appeal. Let me quote you one example from his article.
A Wilkinson sword razor designed to help men not cut themselves whilst shaving. This would be great for older men with poorer eye sight, men with tremors and people more unstable on their feet but what actually happened was that this also appealed to younger men. What about when they have a hangover, are late for work or generally in a rush to get out in the evening and don't want to go there covered in bits of tissue like my grandad used to when I was a little girl! So a product which had been developed for an entirely older market had a universal appeal.
And Coleman goes onto make the point that designers have a very real contribution to make- they can be a bit of an engineer and a technologist but in a more fun way. You can read the article here http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=uv1BEgOz5pgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA74&dq=%22Coleman%22+%22Improving+the+quality+of+life+for+older+people+by+design%22+&ots=XMSNiA7mA1&sig=44IbKd49G76_pOwLTTB8s9S8tCw#v=onepage&q=%22Coleman%22%20%22Improving%20the%20quality%20of%20life%20for%20older%20people%20by%20design%22&f=false Its great!!