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The targets of UD | ～This site is about UD for difference in ages～ |
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UD for ages
From babies to elders, there are lots of ages of people on this planet Earth. Everyone will have and did have an experience of being a baby. They are small and is going to learn lots of things to live to be an adult. And they become bigger, going through the difficulty of moving by having a child or by cause of an accident. Then we become senile infirm with age. We need to have services that cope with problems that happen to every age. These problems will occur to all people including us.
For example, dishes, furniture, and toys which babies play need to guarantee safety. Also for elder people, just a small step in buildings or traffic transportations may lead to an unexpected accident. In this site, we will explain what makes problems to usual designs, and how we can settle these issues, linking with every age.
Baby
Because children do not know what is dangerous and what is not dangerous, we must make sure that nothing will harm the baby carefully. For example, little bumps in buses or on escalators could make small children a big step ? even large adults may trip over these ramps. For a solution for this, “Non-Step Buses” had taken away most steps in the bus. These Non-Step Buses are now in service in places in Japan.
Giving an another example, in preschools and some families, adults are linking pictures of images to things with boxes that small children that cannot read letters for understanding what inside. By earning information by images with a sense of vision, we can know proper information easily from babies to adults.
In constant, we should have a safe and understandable design to make small children play around in an impartial atmosphere with adults.
School Life (From Elementary to High school)
There are lots of contrivance in school, which is the first place to learn group behavior with other children and adults. UD is in the classroom, in toolboxes, all over in school. For example, scissors that have plastic caps on the blade, thumbtacks that have a silicon cover = these are for safety, and also scissors for both right and left-handed and rulers that have scales on both sides ? these are for making fairness to all students.In buildings at school, most windows have stoppers for avoiding students fall over from a high place, and some schools have elevators or slopes for students or teachers that injured their leg.
Because schools are places that students learn things in a vast number, UD is a suitable solution to match to every student who participates in every school.
Adults
Being an adult means that you will experience and see lots of new things in the outer world. Which means we will have more chances to use items that are designed universally.
It is dangerous when pregnant women or people who had injured their body heavily. Seats that were used to be called “Silver Seats” in trains had changed their name to “Priority Seats”- which means that these seats were used to be only for elderlies but is now for all people that have difficulty to stand up in moving trains. For other examples, some vending machines had changed their shape to make people using wheelchairs easier to buy things. Just modifying the height of the buttons and the height of the vending machine, is not UD because it makes ordinary people feel inconvenient. What we call a UD vending machine, has two rows of buttons on the upper body and the lower body of the vending machine. This device made it easier to buy items to both ordinary people and people who use wheelchairs.Because Adults are accounted the most age in society, lots of people have unusual situations and circumstances. We need UD that makes more and more people think items and services are usable and convenient.
Elders
Becoming an elder means that your body is starting to become weak. UD for elders mainly is thought of simplicity.
Maybe only a few people had seen a curved handrail shaped like a snake beside the stairs. These strangely shaped handrails are mostly for people who feels difficult to use the stairs including elders. When we use standard straight handrails, our wrist twists to an unnatural angle. This strange angle makes elders feel difficulty using the stairs. Compared to crooked handrails, by changing where to grab, it makes our wrist easy to put on their weight on the handrail, and also it makes it easier to pull their body up.For other examples, elders have difficulty hearing and seeing things clearly, which lead society better in signs and grade crossings in town. Putting LED signs and leading the path using sounds and noise may avoid accidents from happening.
We can say that elders are having difficulty using their five senses, and a solution for this differ from ordinary people; physical supports can be efficient.
As you can see, UD is for several layers of ages, and society is now for everybody.Not only making a design for a specific group of people, but also making it usable for everyone is a feature of UD.
