Architectural Barriers Act of 1968

Transcription

[Ellen] Thank you all for coming tonight. I'm Ellen Lupton. I'm senior curator of Contemporary Design here at Cooper Hewitt's Smithsonian design museum and we are so happy to welcome you. We have been closed. Now we are open. We have brand new exhibitions for you to see. And amazing programs. Check our website every week. We have just amazing things happening and I'm so glad to share with you tonight what we're doing. I curated an exhibition upstairs called Beautiful Users. Which introduces the public to the idea of design as a human-centered activity. And we look at a range of projects and how designers have transformed from looking at an idea or normative user to a more inclusive and individual approach to who it is that uses this stuff that designers make. So, tonight we're gonna talk about universal design. And what I'm gonna do is briefly introduce our panelist. And I'm gonna turn it over then to Amy Hamraie, who will be our moderator tonight. So, Amy Hamraie is assistant professor of medicine, health, and society. At Vanderbilt University where they study the inner sections of design, disability, and knowledge production. The current book project 'Building Access" Universal design techno-science and the politics of knowledge. Studies the history of universal design in the US through the lenses of feminist disability theories and philosophies of technology so, cool. Amy works in the inter-disciplinary fields of disability studies, feminist science studies and the history and philosophy of science and technology. So, great. Amy is going to start our events with an overview of universal design. Looking at where it came from and how the conversation is changing today. And then each of our panelists will come up and talk for 10 minutes about what they're doing in this field. New stuff happening in this field. So, the first of those panelists is Jon Marshall. He is co-founder and design director at MAP a London based creative consultancy whose clients include some of the most innovative companies in the world. Including Virgin Atlantic, Google, and Panasonic. Jon graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1996, and then worked at leading design firms Pentagram and Ross Lovegrove. He joined Barber Osgerbe as studio director in 2003 and he co-founded MAP in 2012. And his work with [unclear] is included in beautiful users, in fact... all of our panelists have projects on view upstairs. Gianfranco Zaccai is president and chief design officer of Continuum. The global design innovation consultancy behind some products you may have heard of like the Reebok pump and P&G's Swiffer. Continuum has worked with Herman Miller company. To develop new patient care rooms exam rooms, and the Nala patient chair. The metaform trans-generational personal hygiene system which has been featured here at Cooper Hewitt and other places. Facilities independence for people with disabilities and their extended families. Reed Norigard recently became director at Quirky the community powered innovation company. Previously, Reed launched Umhoom, a boutique designer and manufacturer of award winning mobility books She also served as creative director at Frog, Organic Arnell Group and Smart Design in New York City. And finally, Scott Summit founded the Spoke Innovations in 2010 based on 20 years of experience and research in design and additive fabrication, which you may also call 3D printing. Bespoke believes that an integrated approach connecting design medicine and technology stands to offer meaningful and above all individualized solutions to address a wide variety of human needs. Bespoke was acquired by 3D Systems in May of 2012 and Summit now leads the company's industrial design efforts. And he has many products on view here at Cooper Hewitt right now, as do all of you great designers. So, with no further adieu I'm going to pass the event on to Amy to get things started. [applause] [Amy] How's my volume? Good? [audience] Perfect. Ok, well welcome everyone. Thank you all for coming. And thanks to Alan and the Cooper Hewitt for organizing this amazing panel. I'm just gonna talk, a little bit about the history of Universal Design in the United States today. Universal Design is typically something that we talk about as the idea that buildings and products should be accessible by design for as many people as possible. I won't be talking today about any specific examples of objects or spaces. If you would like to see some of them, there are many in this museum. There's also very good historical work that you read about this. What I'm gonna talk about instead, is the concept of Universal Design. The methods that come out of it and communities of of practice that have formed around it. So groups of people who, over a period of time, came together to kind of come up with this idea and to innovate it. It's especially exciting that this is happening here at the Cooper Hewitt because this has really been a place that has driven the concept and theory of Universal Design in very interesting and innovative ways. Primarily under the leadership of a previous director, Diane Pilgrim. Who did a lot of work, both to make the museum building itself accessible and to deepen the collections to include more objects and a kind of human centered design. The types of adtracks that you would see upstairs in the beautiful user's exhibit. Which I hope that everyone will go to. In 1998 this museum actually had the first exhibit of Universal Design products. And it was kind of part of asking questions about what Universal Design should mean moving forward. And so, what I'm gonna do is, kind of, go backwards in history Tell you a little bit about how we got to 1998 And then talk about, kind of where we can go from here. One other thing I want to mention really briefly is that the Smithsonian Institution itself, of which this museam is a part, is a Federal Institution that has been bound by disability access laws since the late 1960's. And because of that, it has actually innovated the movement towards Universal Design in really significant ways, because it has so many museums and so many visitors. And so, beginning in the 1990's the Smithsonian actually worked to implement Universal Design principals into a, kind of, set of guidelines for all of it's museums, and I think there are like 15 or 18 museums maybe. And so, this place is, kind of, part of the largest network of the places where you can actually observe and interact with Universal Design features. And you probably wouldn't know that they're there because they're all built in. The people who were in charge of that, Jan Majuski and Beth Zebarth. Are people who have run the accessibility office and and have done a lot of work in this. And I just want to read something from a letter in 1993. That Jan Maguski wrote to David McFadden who was then at the Cooper Hewitt as a curator. And he was the one who was helping to carry the unlimited by design exhibit that came up in in '98 She wrote, "I think that 2 important points to convey in the Smithsonian access guidelines are that accessible universal design is not inherently ugly and the people with disabilities should be first not last, in the audiences that designers consider in designing environments, programs, and publications. If it works for people with disabilities it'll work for many others. But the reverse is not always true. It might also be interesting to look at instances of design developed for people with disabilities becoming design for everyone. And the reason I read this is I think it really reveals a lot of the experimentation around the concept of universal design that has taken place in our very recent history that this isn't always a stable concept It's always changing and it includes a lot of different components. And so I'll talk about what some of those are and where they've come from. The first time the term universal design appeared in print was in 1985. When the disabled North carolinian architect and industrial designer, Ron Mace wrote an article entitled "Universal Design Barrier Free Environment for Everyone" in which he argued that design should keep all users in mind not just the average and not just users that are labeled as exeptional. And so the ideas that came out of this were 1, that design should have multiple use. That there should be multiple users for an object or a space but also that things should be flexible and be able to be used in different ways. That these designs should have access built into them rather than needing changes later. And that this has added value kind of, for everyone who's invovled. But, words like universal design and phrases like all users or everyone should also give us a little bit of pause because, so often, these ways of talking about users actually flatten the differences betrween them instead of appreciating the differences that are significant or that would require different access needs. There's actually nothing about terms like universal or all users that ensures that designers will remain accountable. To disabled users. And there's also nothing in these terms that recognizes the political demands of marginalized users. And the way that marganalized users, such as disabled people, have contributed to the history of desing. Particularly in the case of universal design. So, why do we even use these terms? This is something that people have asked pretty much during the entire history or universal design and other terms have been proposed, such as design for all or trans-generational design, design for aging But the reason why we use these terms and why the word universal is in the title, is because disabled people have been denied access to membership in the universal historically. And because these terms have been ways that designers and advocates have talked about the relationship between disability and design, for decades. Since after world war 2, when there was kind of an influx of a lot of disabled veterans into the US society, as well as moving out of institutions and nursing homes by civilians with disabilities. Since that time designers have been thinking about users, whether average or non-average, in different ways. In the late 40's there were actually two competing paradigms for what today we call user-centered design. The first was taking place within industrial design and you can see a lot of examples of this for users, actually, but Industrial designer, Henry Dryfess came up with the idea of human-engineering or what now we might call ergonomics. But it was frequently for he average person. And he saw human variation as a resource for design but didn't really have a consciousness about disability. And so, disability was entering into design elsewhere. In architecture, of all places, there was a movement towards barrier-free design, which was the idea of removing architectural barriers for disabled people and de-segregating society to undo the work of institutionalization. And things like that. And barrier-free design actually saw disability as a resource for design, rather than a deficit. And it saw disabled people as resourceful designers themselves and so there are a lot of examples, and the historian Bess Williamson, has written about this in the 1940's and 50's of for instance, people with polio who do these, kinds of like DIY hacks in their houses or invent different technologies themselves. And their resourcefulless is part of this process of removing barriers in society. It's actually ironic that these parallel tracks are happening at the same time because today it is industrial design that pays a lot more attention to disability. And in architecture a disability tends to, kind of still be marginalized and associated with, kind of, minimum standards and legal codes. Some of the things that took place in the early days of barrier-free design These are really old scans of very old pictures so, I'll try to describe what's happening in them Different kinds of wheel chair ramps, hydraulic lifts for public transportation These images from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaigne which was one of the first accessible campuses in the United States beginning in the late 1940's and into the 50's and 60's their stall program down and in barrier-free design, as you can see in these pictures, buildings and products were integrated. So, architecture and product design had to happen together because you needed access in both for it to be meaningful. And from the beginning, the emphasis was this was beneficial for all users not just disabled users. And so,part of the research that went into the first barrier-free design standards, actually reported that at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne they had developed these shower seats for people to use for instance for a wheel chair user to transfer into the shower And they were made of really good materials but they broke very quickly, and when they investigated to see why they were breaking quickly. They found out that all of the non-disabled students were using these shower seats, too. And so it was exceeding the kind of amount of use that was necessary. And so from that they gleaned that many of these technologies are actually beneficial to a wider user base. The language... of, kind of, all users appears again in 1967 when the Rehabilitation Services Administration wrote a report in support of a bill that came to be know as the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, was the first law that said that public buildings, like Federal buildings had to be accessible. And this report was just called "Design for All Americans" It made the argument that disabled and elderly people were citizens and so they deserved access to de-segregated spaces. What was interesting about this though was that even though it was happening at the height of the Civil Rights Movement there was really no consideration of racial integration in a lot of these laws. And so, even the way that the user was constructed and barrier free design was very white. And it was not until much later that, for instance the Federal Housing Act was amended to include disability. To look at some of those inner sections between racial segregation and disability segregation. The Architectural Barriers Act was poorly enforced and so was another law, Section 504 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, which would have made the bill enforceable. And so disability activists, famously protested They conducted some of the longest Sit-Ins in US history. And forced Federal Government to enforce these laws. This is a sit-in in Washington DC, there are also ones in San Francisco. And, while they were waiting for those laws to be enforced what they die was they invented Curb Cuts. And this is, kind or a really good example of the kind of resourcefullness and ingenuity of disabled people as Designers. Curb cuts are the technology that we most commonly use to talk about Universal Design. And the idea is that wheelchair users can use them, bicyclists people pushing strollers and people walking and people getting around in all sorts of other ways,. But, where these come from, and there's kind of like a lot of lore about this. And disability rights movement history. The lore is that disabled people would go out under dark of night with sledge hammers and bust up the sidewalks and pour cement curb cuts. And they're placed just so that they could get around So, there's actually a piece of one of these curb cuts from a Denver ADAPT protest from 1978 in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. which is what I'm showing here. And there are also examples of this that happened in Berkely and other places So that you kind of get a sense of this, like social movement activity towards barrier-free design and the idea that people were innovating different ways of having built environments so that everyone could use them. In the 1980's the design profession started to kind of catch up with all of this Specific organizations that were kind of integrating more of the disability consiousness, the Industrial Design Society of America, The Environmental Assigned Research Association As well as design schools began teaching about disability. So, people like Elain Ostroff in Boston, Ray Lechay in San Francisco at the University of California Berkely began to kind of look to what they called user experts or the idea that disabled users could also be experts in the design process. And then communities began to form around what would later be called Universal Design And these are necessarily inter-disaplinary communities And they were kind of united around a shared investment in disability access by bringing different perspectives together And so in 1982 there was a conference called "Designed Environments for All People" that happened at actually in New York City. And this was where Ronald Mace got the idea for Universal Design. And it was partially through talking to all these peopel. And I'm about to list some people who may or may not mean anything to some of you, but I'll just tell you. So, the disabled politician, Max Cleland, before he was a Senator. Hale Zuchis, who was a leader of the Independent Living Movement in Berkely and allegedly one of the curb cut smashers. Victor Propanek, just as he was finishing his book, "Design for the Human Scale" Architects Lawrence Halprin Charles Moore and Stanley Tigerman. Barrier-free design experts I already mentioned Ron Mace. Also other people you may have heard of John Salmon, Gunner Debois James Bostrom, Polly Welch Ray Lefshay, and Patricia Mooring And then some social scientists who are kind of leaders in this field of accesibilty today. Gary Moore, John Zisel and Craig Zimmering This is 1982. It was kind of like a meeting of the minds. All these people got together and said, "How can we make "How can we actually make Barrier-free design" kind of successful in the built environment And this is reportedly where Mace came up with his idea which he wrote about in 1985. So, fast forward a few years to 1990. This is when the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed. And this was landmark legislation. Civil Rights legislation But one of the things that it did was that it made barrier-free design basically synonymous with meeting, kind of mall code standards. And people started to use other language to talk about what barrier-free design had meant for the, you know the 40 years. Up until then. And the language that they sometimes used for that was universal design Sometimes universal design also meant anything that was outside of the law Sometimes it meant anything that had built-in accessibility. Sometimes it meant design for aging. That's still a really common thing. And very frequently it meant any kind of design that had nothing to do with disability at all. Which is really strange and unfortunate And the argument was that disability design was either what you enforced through a code or something that was inherently about quote unquote "Special Needs" And the universal design was about good design for everyone. I think that this was kind of where things started to get a little weird. Because what that definition encouraged was this idea of disability as a hinderance to design rather than a resource. And so disability kind of became a liability for marketing. Or for Or you know what could be counted as good design. And that's still a really dominant conception of universal design shape that I think is very problematic. And that I think that we should, kind of like I do my historical work to show why this is not the case becasue I think that it's more important to think about disability as a resource and to remember the history of disabled designers and activists who contributed to this idea. So, in 19... between '95 and '97, a group of designers and experts came up with the 7 principals of universal design to kind of remedy some of this problem with not everyone really knowing what universal design meant. Or agreeing. And what they did was they sort of combined all of these ideas. So they emphasized equity and flexibility, which are kind of more disability inclusive. The also talked about things like tolerance for error allowing multiple mediums and sources of information and providing adequate space for users to interact, which are kind of things that come from where the industrial designer, human-factor side. And this is basically the most often cited document in universal design. And it's been contested a lot but it's pretty much the one that everyone always talks about. And what it did was it turned universal design into a process and a methodology rather than a single unified concept by recognizing that it was not a unified concept. And so that is kind of like the dominate paradigm of universal design. And I'll just show one last thing, which is where I think universal design is going in some ways and what is should be doing. Kind of going forward. This is a picture from the Bluesong Spinal Cord Center in Vancouver B.C., which is a completely universally designed building. Down to every feature. But it's primary esthetic and functional feature is this ramp that goes to every floor of the building. And it's decorated and it's in a glassy tram. And it kind of proclaims the existence of disability and celebrates it as a resource in the design of the building itself rather than trying to hide it and trying to distance the concept from disability. So, I'll just leave that there for us to think about and we'll have our other speakers now. Thank you. [applause] I'm Jeremy. So my name's Joe Marshall and I'm director of a design studio in London called Mac and we're in Shoreditch, which is the east part of London. And we do industrial design with a, I think user-centered approach. And based on a lot of research there's something quite unique about our studio. We're part of a group. That includes Bob Oscoby, which is a furniture studio and also universal design studio, which is an Architecture practice/ And the name is really, really confusing in the context of today's event. Formed over 10 years ago, before the term was widely used, in the U.K at least And so really love about being in this studio with all these different scales of things going on at the same time is the kind of focus on user or people So, you have furniture designer, working alongside product designers. Where product designers are pushing millimeters around on products that you hold in your hand next to them you've got architects with big chunks of material thinking about environments which you pass through. And I think this kind of cross-pollination between the different scales of product design, furniture design, and architecture. Is something that I find very exciting about our studio, and very interesting. It brings us all the time, back to the user. So the sort of projects that we do at Map and things like a meal tray for Virgin Atlantic that was a better experience for the passanger but also was lightweight and therefor saved energy. An exhibition for Google which was about the power of the Internet So, we created some experiments which enabled people to interact with objects in the museum but also online over the Internet. So, a musical instrument you could paly or a robot which could draw your face in sand and is actually one of these robots here in the museum. We also went with a lot of technology companies. So, for instance working with Yamaha on flexible speaker technology. And so we've found quite a number of projects with Panasonic and Panasonic have a very melted generational approach to design A good example is this induiction hub which in order to kind of communicate the new technology of induction cooking, uses these lights which, just around the area where the pans are put. And that is sort of symbolic of the flame on a gas hub. And so that's a really good communication method. To get across kind of a new technology. The process we use as I said, I think it's very user focused. There are sort of 4 pillars to it, in my opinion. First of all research. So we like our designers to go out and do the research and largly speaking that means going into people's homes and talking to people about the products they use. The second thing is that before we start design, we actually build stories or strategies which articulate in written form, what we intend to do and what a measure of success would be. And sort of true to the sterotype it involves a lot of post-it notes. The third thing is that we... although we're a consultantcy we tend to procreate most of our work with our clients in the room together. So, there's a lot of meetings and workshops And the fourth thing is that we are always prototyping and making models of our work. And we use those to test the design with users as part of the process. So, I've actually picked out two projects which I think are good examples of that process that I've just articulated. And also I think there are elements of universal design in both of them. The first one is the Cano Computer Kit. So this is computer kit aimed at kids and you can build a computer and learn to code using this kit. So, the process was very much as I described earlier. So, there's a lot of meetings with the client. And this was a start-up so we were actually starting from scratch really. And we also spend a lot of time observing the target group, who were kids in this case. And we also tried in this instance to combine together the product design and the packaging as a single unified experience. We're using models and mock-ups to try to refine the design and test those with the user. So, a couple of things that I think came out of it that were quite interesting or insights, they're interesting. One was when we were watching the kids playing with the kit. We noticed how much they used color to organize what they were doing. So, in the final design we used a lot of colored cables, and we kind of codified what the cables did. And that runs right through the product and the packaging and also into the instructions. And the second thing is that it was really interesting watching kids as young as 6 using a track pad. So they didn't seem to be able to do click and drag. Which I don't know if you're familiar with new track-pad pad. It's something that you use a lot to sort of drag and drop things in the computer environment. So Since kids were not able to do that. We actually designed the keyboard with these seperate... These 2 grey buttons on he bottom left. Seperate left and right mouse buttons. So that enabled kids really young, even those without much dexterity to manipulate things in the computer So I think those kind of points on this project were quite interesting for us and they are, I think quite universal design processes. The second project I want to talk about and Ellen mentioned this. There's some pieces from this in the exhibition here. It's Sabe Space. Sabe's actually an interesting band set-up called SF1 took about 3 years ago, specifically to target baby boomers On first range that was created with these really sort of super slick organizers. So we were approached to do a follow-up range, which is called Sabe Space and really the only restriction on us, with any brief was to do something that still appeal to this core demographic of baby boomers but, it was just for the home Anywhere in the home. And we have quite a young team at Map. So, one of the first things we did was we dug into all the available desk research on baby boomes and try to kind of understand what the issue were for this target group. We also did a lot of workshops with the client, and we also spoke to a lot of experts in this field And we sort of... What we arrived at was an idea around agility. So, the things that seem to be issues where reaching, eyesight, memory. So, a typical product that we thought we might design would be a sort of reaching stick to help grab things from a high book shelf. From a high book shelf. When we actually spoke to the users as part of our home visit research. We found that they didn't really like that informational connection with these agility and answers like these reaching sticks. And instead what we found is that these baby boomers. They just thought they were young, so they didn't really realize they were aging. Why not, so we just thought however well we we can design something that kind of agility enhancer they're not gonna buy it, so Instead the themes that came up were around organization, neatness and solving simple problems. And very much in the bathroom actually so, we re-focused our attention onto the bathroom. And we took these 3 sort of key ideas. One was to design things that were not stigmatizing. So it didn't look like they were for aging people. Second one was to hire people to use products to change simple things in their daily life. And the third one was just around quick fixes. Simple things. So, there's kind of no better quick fix than sticky tape. And actually the range that we came up with is all based on this 3M tape, which is on a little peg that you can stick onto the wall and then you can use that to put on the wall really quickly, in any room but primarily in the bathroom a range of functional devices. So it thinks it quite decorative in a way, like a rail for, a hook rail or things that are about self, so mirrors Things that are about organization like a shower caddy And some things that were more about function, for instance moving a toilet paper if it's in the wrong position and you have to twist around is really hard in the bathroom with the tiled wall. But with this adhesive part it could be done really easily. So, the range looks really nice and kind of universal and appeals to old and young alike. But one of the things that we wanted is we wanted to include at least one of these agility enhancer type products in the range, so this round kind of halo like blue thing that on the wall is actually it's a grab rail to help people get in and out fast. So one thing we noticed with the bathroom is that a lot of accidents when people step in and out of the bath. We wanted to solve that as well as solving all the other things that I mentioned So, we were searching for a kind of format that was non-stigmatizing. But also worked really well for it's core functionality of being able to grab or lean on. And we did that through a range of models. Pretty models. I'm just testing them and I'm using video to kind of communicate this back to the client So we went with in the end was the round shape. And it was mostly because it offers different ways to grab around it so if you are a couple and one's tall and one's short you can grab it in two different places. And also that the curved shape itself is quite easy to grab if you have arthritis. And so partly this was done through testing and partly it was done through discussion with experts. And I think above all it meets the sort of no stigma approach that we wanted. So you can throw a towel on it and it doesn't really look like a grab rail. So, one final thing I just wanted to mention And it's a kind of personal passion of mine is about how packaging can significantly improve product so you can design a great product but if you can't get into the packaging, it's massivley frustrating. So, in this range in particular we took care of the packaging to create very clear simple packaging that was easy to open. And we even added things like a template to help you put in on the wall with a little spirit level to make sure you got those beautiful hanging rails straight. And we also took a lot of care on the instructions so, instructions for products typically are not instructions so typically they're not done by the core design team but in this case we put them into our scope. And took a lot of CADS to make sure that they were very clear. So, that's the Sabe Space range and I think, just as a final note with those two projects which are for growth companies Universal design is not any good for the user but I think for our clients it's a kind of business imperitive. So, with that I'll had over to John Franco. [applause] Thank you. Nice work. Well thank you very much. So, I took the theme very litterally. About whether it's myth or reality anmd I really think that it's a little bit of both. Right? That it's really about design for all And all is a very broad distribution of people. And in some cases we've made things better for many more people. And in some cases making things better for making more people creates problems for others. A friend of mine Jane Thompson once said. I love to quote her. She said that most problems are caused by solutions.. And I remember meeting an individual that was part of that was part of the drafting of the American's with Disabilities Aid. Who is blind. And he mentioned that curb cuts actually create a problem for blind people. Because they can't detect where the sidewalk ends and the where the street begins. Of course that's been taken care of with some, you know, textures and so forth that allows people to understand that transition. But I think But I think there are a lot of It's a very broad brush that we talked about when we talk about design for a universal design, right. And there are many kinds of disabilities. There are physical disabilities. There are intelectual disabilities, right? And in some ways there are also cultural and racial disabilities because we create them. So, I think that the idea of looking at areas of common desires for mobility, for example. Among a very broad and diverse group of people, is absolutely valid But, I think it's also important to think about designing for one. Right? Because the needs of people at the extreme ends of the ability spectrum are very, very different. So, I think we have to be nuanced in what we do. Now, I think designing things that are easier for all, just makes sense, right? And A number of years ago, it's now 16 or 17 years ago, we came up with the Swiffer for Proctor and Gamble, so that's just about cleaning, right? Using a lot of water and detergent to clean a floor. It was both messay and unproductive because most of what's on the floor is dust And the best way to pick it up is with static electricity. And a simple disposable piece of paper. And that's easier for everybody and when I When the product was introduced, my sister who small grandchild at the time, was delighted because her grandchild started cleaning the floor for her. Because it was kind of fun. It was kind of fun, right? So doing things that are non-stigmatizing and fun actually, is really good objectivbe. Removing barries is also a good objective, so 27 years ago we started a project for Herman Miller called Metaform. And part of that... And Metaform, for us, was all about personal hygiene. How people can be independent. In their own homes and personal hygiene becomes really important. And that's really where we learned what the previous speaker spoke about. The importance of not stigmatizing people. Because we were looking at a broad range of older users. And we realized that even though they needed help many of the tools were available like grab bars and so forth, were not present in their bathrooms Right? And my own father at the time was aging and his ability was decreasing rapidly. And he didn't want hear about any of that, right? But he would love to go to a supermarket and push a shopping cart around because there was no stigma to that. Never would us a walker however. So, anyway so we designed a number of components to a bathroom you know, including this barrier free drain that would remove water without requiring any kind if a curb. And where the covers could go into the dishwasher because that would be easier to maintain. But we also wanted to think about mass optimization, right? Because we have the technology allows us to do things that can adjust themselves for individual needs. And that also allows us to overcome some of the stigma issues. Because we're thinking about you know, older people with grandchildren. Right? Why should we stigmatize either one of those? So, as part of the metaform we designed things like these modules that would fit into a wall, where for example a sink with storage, lighting mirrors would all adjust at the touch of a button, or better yet would adjust because a steeling as you entered the room measured you. And with everything would appear at the proper height. And a toilet that would also adjust to different heights. And why is that important? Well, because we're really designed, as human beings to go in the bushes and squat. And when we do that, it requires less effort. But it's not very decorous. And most Westerns are not comfortable doing that, right? But also we have a problem because men miss the mark, so you'd like to have a toilet much higher for certain functions Right? And children who were just learning to potty train would like to have a toilet that's much lower so that they don't have to fear falling in. So we designed this toilet that would rotate into the wall, where it would be cleaned because nobody likes to clean the toilet. But you could sit on it at any height. You could transfer from a wheelchair. You could sit at a very high height and ride it down to a semi-squat position to facilitate elimination. But we also realized as we develop more solutions that sometimes, solutions that disappear are the very best. Because there's stigma even in overcoming diseases, like diabetes. So this is a wearable, disposable insulin pump which was developed about 7 or 8 years ago for a start-up company in Massachusits and the whole idea And the whole idea was to be able to dispense insulin over a constant period. Controllable based on someone's activity and based on what they've eaten. With a remote controller so you clean a part on the body and apply the pump and then it automatically inserts a cannula and then dispenses insulin. Over a 3 day period. And the great thing about this was that up until this time a lot of type 1 diabetics, that tend to be children, would not be using insulin pumps. And the reason for not using it was thought to be because they would often have infections because of the exterior lines would get snagged as they play and you know what, the area would get dirty and an infection would ensue. But, we really felt that, that was only part of the problem. Part of the problem, yes, children want to play. But they also want to look just like other children. So, they don't want to be stigmatized. So the idea of a pump that you could wear under your clothes you could wear when you're sleeping and it would just go away, seemed like a natural and very desirable solution. So, this product was developed. We developed it over a 2 or 3 year period. In 3 years it got FDA approval. And I got an email from a girl a 14 year old girl in India saying how the pump really had made diabetes not be a very important part of her life. So, that was extremely rewarding Sometimes I think designing for everybody, doesn't mean reducing effort, or eliminating effort. Sometimes it means calibrating effort. So, this is a chair that we did for Herman Miller for healthcare. And it's a chair that's designed for patient rooms And what we realized it was that the function of a chair in a patient room is not just for people to sit in and maybe sleep in. But it's to facilitate them getting in and out of the chair as easily and as frequently as possible. But also with some effort. Because that ability to regain mobility after you've had an operation or any kind of a medical procedure, is extremely important So the chair seat is slightly higher when you approach it You have room to put your feet behind your knees, which give a mechanical advantage. Because we want people to use their own muscle power at that point. The arms are forward so you can feel where they are, and you can sit down, because we also wanted to not make necessary calling a nurse to guide you into the chair. And then when you sit down and you release a lever in the arms, the arm rest, which prior to that was actually up leaning forward to greet you. Let you know that you're in the right position. Would guide you in a semi-reclined position where you can very comfortably sleep But when you wanted to get up it would put a little bit of pressure moving forward, the seat would rise a little bit and would help you to get up But I think there's also another dimension of accessibility, which is economic accessibility. Right? So we tend to think about solutions that are wonderful solutions but they require a tremendous amount of financial capital to access. And this wheelchair that you see on the the lower image, was actually designed by a post-graduate student at MIT to help people like you see in the left picture in developing world in areas that are very difficult to traverse if you are in a wheelchair. And the whole idea of the wheelchair is that it uses bicycle components that are very inexpensive It eliminates the derailure, which is the most expensive part of a bicycle. And it uses these levers so that if you put your hands up high on the lever you can exert a lot of force. Down low you get a lot of speed. So that a local artisan can weld frame apply the bicycle compenents And you have a wheelchair that would allow someone to actually get to work. The only problem is that this wheelchair costs about two hundred dollars. And for many people two hundred dollars is a year's income. So, we designed the wheelchair at the top which is exactly the same principle but it really leverages the leverage of the arms. To create an off-road wheelchair that out-performs almost any other wheelchair out there, potentially for a fraction of the cost But it's priced competitively with the idea that the sale of each one of those would pay for three ones below, right? Again, to provide accessibility to more people that would not have the financial wherewithall to have it. And sometimes we also, I think, need to design things that will change constantly. Because new abilities and new disabilities are happening all the time. This is a small example of that, but this is another project for Herman Miller. Which is patient room, an exam room. And it's all based on components that can be mounted to a wall and can be re-positioned and adjusted as new technology presents itself or different levels of acuity in a community presents themselves. I think the same notion in the design of a home can also have a great deal of merit. And I think there are many realities. One thing that I'm thinking a lot about these days is intellectual disability. And the interserting thing about intellectual disability is that it's not just about people who have a very, very low IQ. But, if we look at manufacturing jobs they often require skill sets that require being able to program a computer, for example So, if half of the population in the world has an IQ of a hundred or below there gonna have a very hard time finding gainful employment. Now, how can we make an environment to society workplaces that engage people productively give them the kind of dignity that they want to be able to work productively and navigate a community productively. You know, even though they may have an IQ of 90, 95, 80 85,. that's part of the spectrum of disability. So, thank you. [applause] Thank you. Hello. So, I took the universal design in the future part to heart and in order to do that I'm just gonna go back a little bit first. I was very lucky to start my career working on the then small team with Smart Design, designed the original line of products for a now well-known It was a formative company called Oxo Experience for me and the team what we learned and then acted upon was that by looking at the outer edges of ability, we can make a much better experience for everyone in the middle. Which is sort of another way of looking at universal design. If you're familiar with a product that it's now a very extensive line of products in the market and some of the prototypes from that original line are available for view also here in the museum. So that's what I took with me when I many years later launched with two other women, a company that set out to change the way we think and feel about disability and aging through design, nothing less And we did that by launching with a cane A cane is obvious because no one wants one Yet it's a very useful object for many people who use one and need it and the fabulous item for a number of people who could use it but would not for all the reasons that we discussed earlier. So, that was our mission. We made a design deliberately based on modes of transportation and feelings that we knew we all had positive feelings about, namely using the bicycle as a material and a skate board and a hiking boot and put them back together in the cane, so that the feeling and the joy of movement would still be there in an object although a person has a very different view of the world. Walking with a cane. On the other side you see a cane power user. I don't know this one, it's a photograph on the streets of New York and you can what happens when you actually enjoy using an object for moving around. It's a very safe, comfortable product. But, it's also in this case, a personal accessory and it's something that, people still write to me and say to me, I could not get my mom to use a cane or I ddin't want one when I was recovering but if I could have one of those ones and the nice turquoise one, then I would do it and design has ability to change how we think and feel about a certain situation in life or about a whole category of products and this one, Durable Medical Equipment is one where there's lots of opportunity in those. Exciting to work in. Then I managed to talk a little bit about the opportunities of what universal design can mean in the future as we're entering a time when we can customize equipment things that are close to the body as we can 3D print them we can scan, we can make better fits and we can design for the one. But I think that the area of shared spaces and public spaces is still an enormous opportunity and this is a project that I didn't have anything to do with it but I thought you would enjoy seeing it. It is the world's most accesible office building is what they call it, it is the headquarters of the Association of People with Disabilities It's in Copenhage. It's about 2 years old. I got a fabulous tour from the director of that association She's still in an electric wheelchair with very limited mobility And she's able to get anywhere in that building by herself without any help. So, you can see just by paying attention to acoustics creating open spaces where you can have intimate conversations providing guidance using color as coding that's very bright both on the floor and in the walls around you can make it really easy for people to move around The indication that you reach door is included. Into the hand rail and you can get the elevator by using your foot and not your hands, which is seems very obvious, right? It's actually kind of handy if you have your arms full, as well and as the day progressed in that building, I started doing the same thing. If you use your foot, the elevator knows to go local because it knows that you obviously pushed a button when you go on the inside, so things like that, we keep seeing them, they seem obvious when there all put together. When a group of people work to get together on requirements that actually fulfill the needs of, in this case a very large group of people with various kinds of disabilities then you have, again you have yourselves that are beneficial and really super pleasant to use for everyone else. Ok Fast forward to I followed quirky for a number of years and I'm very interested in how the process of design can evolve and I joined them recently and I'm working with them now. So, Quirky is a community powered invention company. A platform if you will. You can submit an idea for an invention, for a new product most of the ideas that we get are based on real life problems that people have. We vote as a community we have over a million members. Every week tonight, actually, and if a product is voted in then, Quirky, the company, will work with the inventor to design, develop produce and market this product. So, it changes how designers and users can work together And I find that fascinating, so an inventor will have access to a community of potential like-minded people or users that can give feedback along the process and they have access to design and engineering resources and we, on the inside have access to a community of people that we can work with in real time on the designs that we're developing, so this notion of designing For versus with, really comes to life in this setting. And it's pretty exciting. It also means that invention can happen anywhere This is one of our inventors. Her name is Maria She has 4 kids under the age of 6. And with shopping for a while Didn't find anything she liked. Submitted an idea to us and became an inventor with a product on the market This is her product And these are the ladders. One of the things that happened at Quirky was that the ratio of concepts ideas for smart products App-enabled products To, let's say home and gardening products really changed in the past couple of years So, in response to that. Wink a company was established. So that all of the inventions all the products that people make, that are app-enable can play together. Link is an App and a platform that allows your nest GE and other products to work together seamlessly, so that's another rule that I think of access to design is kind of like the universal kit that's shown upstairs is like link is this part that allows all these different types of inventions to work together. And that's another rule for designers and people that are interested in accessabilty to really focus on those two make systems, hats and environments that are usable for people. Imagine that in Healthcare That would be amazing, right? So, amazing right? Is to make home automation accessible to as many people as possible and in doing that we've made a series of small movies with people who you may not expect on the forefront of home automation then here are the Lauders [The Lauders] We have Wink and we love it. And we're the beginning of [The Lauders] some things. [[violin music] [The Lauders] Wink found we two to be. [The Lauders] Eight, he turns it up, to make it warmer. [The Lauders] I turn it down when he's not looking. They left the sprinkler system. It goes on automatically. Where you work it with the Up phone. That's wonderful, because we could be sitting and watching television. Forgot to turn out the lights. So they won't yell at me. We want the 43 years to be 44 years. Keep your hands off my favorite stock. I'll do all the investing with Wink. I'm Irving. I'm Maxine We're the Lauders. We live in Del Rey Beach Florida Enough of that. [applause] Hi. So, my area of interest is in those in betweener parts of design where you can't really detect if a product is mass produced or custom made. If it's craft, if it's fine art, just where it falls. If it starts defying the silos, and defying the categorization, I think that where things really start to get interesting with design. And I think especially this holds true when you're talking about a medical product, because these are the ones that we interact with when we are at our most vulnerable. When we actually have to use something because we don't want to. We don't have a choice and we would love it if that product actually respected us in return. Also the bar is very low there. Because it's traditionally been designed by medical personel without regard for design or fashion or the human beyond the most utilitarian perspective very often, and so those are very limited by the means of means of creation, in this case the traditional fiberglass wrap for external stablization. All of a sudden you change up some of the tools that you can use to fabricate these. And you change everything, so for example when you throw in in 3D scanning, fairly new but now made very convenient, and Haptic manipulation. It's a tool that traditionally was beyond the realm of most people. Now it's very easy. All of a sudden the cast can look like a very different thing. In this case Aniese here refused to give us the cast back long after she'd been healed, because she kind of fell in love with it. We actually made her two so she could put one in the dishwasher every night and wake to a somewhat hygenic clean warm fresh cast. That doesn't happen in fracture civilations. She had a broken arm. Or these two girls who both broke their tibias falling down the stairs. They played in the sand every day and they took a bath in the sand evacuated. Fiberglass cast where the first rule is it can never get wet. So all of a sudden this changes up the rules in the quality of life for everybody. I was hit about October with the diagnosis that I had a torn TFCC ligamint. in my wrist. This would have been a real pain otherwise except we did what any self-respecting nerd would do which is you 3D scan my arm. Design the parts based on not getting in the way of circulation or muscles or bony prominences design it, modify it a few times And then 3D print the brace. And we can probably safely say that this is the best brace that any human has ever received for post-operative stabilization. I'm able to... the first thing I did when I came out of the surgery was I took a shower. You can't do that with a normal brace. I go in for regular accupuncture I apply heat and cold directly to the surgical site I can... I have a quality of life that's never been given to somebody going through post-operative surgery recovery. Same applies to carpal tunnel. A major problem with the data world. Most people think that if you buy the brace, you will be healed and that's actually not, in fact, true. You actually have to wear the brace and that's what people don't do. They don't wear it because it's an awful miserable experience, the human being was never considered in the process. But what happens if you 3D scan the arm, design it, let the person choose the type of brace and the fenestration patern that best suits there fashion sense and their lifestyle And 3D print something that is tactically transparent to them It's invisible to the lifestyle and comfortable. If they will wear it more they will be healed Now you scale that up to scoliosis, which is especially difficult because the means of production this mentality that is devoid of fashion and that squishy human component leads to this This is state of the art. This is the best money can buy in scolosis treatment This is treatment today. The entire treatment hinges on the idea that you can get an 8 year old girl to do something she's absolutely determined not to do, which is to wear this horrible thing. What could possibly go wrong? So we did instead was to attack the real problem which is the desireability of the product. We made it something that was invisible under clothing so we could afford her some discretion We made a 40 percent open area so her skin would breathe so that she had, had her creature comforts during recovery Most importantly, we let her choose from a library of patterns. That turned it into a fashion item that she chose instead of a medical object that was imposed upon her That little switch meant that she was going to wear the brace more. If she wears it more, she will be healed That's the way this compliance based medicine works We actually debut'd these in Paris a few months ago at the Louvre and we had some interest in the medicine value of scoliosis treatment. But we had far, far more we had far more interest in the fashion. And we had many request for people asking for if we could make them corsets and bodices this way We haven't gone down that path, we're just not set up to. Or the next generation that we're working on here which is fully dynamic, which allows the body full range of motion during treatment. We haven't proven this out yet. But, if we can it means that scolios treatment will be a slight inconvenience. But not the kind of miserable condition that it currently is. My main focus has, for many years, been on prostetic limbs in a sense that it's this odd hybrid of a collection of assembled mass produced metal products and this carbon and fiberglass socket, which is very ill juxtaposed against the grace and the beauty of the human form it's a prostetic device but there are prostetic devices around us all the time. We just don't see them that way because they were designed and now it's simply engineered. So, when you start thinking about this perch and you can 3D scan the person and capture their unique form. Their uniqueness Their sense of flow of their body. What their shape is, their contours The lifestyle. You can start creating something that really captures a lot more about them and represents who they are as a person What is their lifestyle? How they outwardly project themselves, how they describe themselves It becomes something that is much more a part of their life than simply something that keeps them from falling over., This woman asked if we could do chrome fishnet stockings And we did, she's an actress in Hollywood. Now she buys her clothes to match her leg. Boston bombing victim was asking if we could do something that was akin to jewelry That's exactly what we're hoping to do. We're hoping to start bluring those distinctions between what is a medical product and what is something that has more of the connotation of fashion and beauty and that really augments the body and accentuates it. It really showcases it as a thing. It celebrates the condition instead of either trying to hide it or disguise it or treat it as anything else. Now in developing countries it's especially big challenge because access to medicine is really the gating factor. So what we're hoping to do is one day transform this into something that is entirely designed by script and by algorythm where the doctor's removed from the equation because that doctor will not exist in much of the world where there most needed. We can create this by 3D scanning. We all have a 3D scanner in our pocket now with the smart phone running the script up into the cloud where it gets parsed and created a 3 dimensional light can be printed. And something that is not only body symetric So it relieves the stigma. It's also something that looks beautiful is again to reduce some of the social stigma that is sometimes as debilitating as anything else for people who have lost limbs in much of the world. The leg can be fully functional, if not more functional, than your typical leg and the dividend here is that you can take advantage of all of the different opportunities now. Which is you can create an application which scales has rapidly around the world as a video game with very, very minimal upfront equipment because your smart phone becomes essentially your hospital in your pocket And the 3D printing allows the kind of versitility that lets you create something that's otherwise very custom very complex, very nueanced but the 3D printer doesn't care. It simply prints any data that comes it's way. So, I can create a very sophisticated otherwise price prohibitive leg in significantly less cost that the traditional leg might be Now this is still in development. It has years to go But I see this as ultimately the way we will see pressed out egglooms in the future to much of the world And one final project that we've worked on has been where the group called Exobionics that one day we see that this will be augmented or replaced in many cases for some by this, which is an exoskeletal robot which helps people who are hemi paregic to walk. Right now it's in it's nascent stages but we can see the pathway on this is fairly clear. Ultimately Amanda here who is paraplegic from the L6 down She was asking us, well can we end up with something that was more like this. Something that was an intelligent active robotic fabric. And that itself is not too far fetched of an idea, because you could actually create a cellular matrix of distributed power on essentially swarming robots that become our secondary skin skin and power her through walking. Short of that which we can't do immediately. We were able to begin with a 3D scan of her body that essentially co-created her into the equation we captured her standing and sitting and then the idea was to really downplay the military component of that robot. Half of that company is for military, half is civilian And really accentuate the fluiiidity And the flow of her lines and how that robot worked We actually added 3D printed sterling silver as a little bit of robot bling We really wanted to capture her form. She's an athlete and she said she just wants to feel beautiful when she's wearing the robot around town And so we also tried to give a suggestion of not only the breathability that it offers but the but the musculature that the robot is replacing With her's that's no longer active. This is the final result, a year and a half ago We debuted it on stage in Budapesh in front of the government and a number of other people. Absolutely unsure of whether or not it would work or whether she would tumble with her on stage, but she was able to walk and she fell in love with the new variations of this robot and we're now looking at how the next generations of this robot may work. Now remember, she's paralyzed from the waist down She has no sensation from her navel downward And so when you're talking about the combination and the opportunities offered by the combineing 3D scanning, heptic manipualtion, 3D printing It's pretty boundless and we can see that there's a pretty exciting trajectory ahead and it really doesn't just relate to people in trajectory ahead Like Amanda here it relates to all of us because we really have to consider that everyone here is was, or will be disabled Thanks [applause] Is this one on? Ok, yes So, we're gonna take questions from the audience now Simi, is there someone to Oh, there you go. Thank you. Hi, thank you all for this I'd like to take just a moment to tell any powers that be here at the Cooper Hewitt that as a wheelchair user I encountered 3 or 4 obstacles between entering the museum and, at this moment which I would like to share with you some of them by design and some of them in practice that I was disappointed to see in this museum so at some point maybe we can convey that Thank you for your presentation and Amy, thank you so much for centering disability. It is so rarely centered in these conversations Architecture and spaces \the other presenters and one of the things you pointed out is that there is a disconnect between both the process and the focus of the designers of objects and that of architects I experience a great deal of what I label as aggression from the design of buildings and public spaces The segregation and the seperation disabled people from the general public and I wonder if the powers and you as well might respond to what I see in your process you talk about collaboration and that's fantastic I don't see that happening in architecture And I wonder if any of you designers might address what the difference might be berween you and what architects do? Can I answer? So, I'm both and architect and although most of what I do is products I think part of the problem is that architecture and the way architecture is planned and developed is usually not at really at the human scale It's, you know historically it was plan and elevation and sections, right? And until it was built it couldn't be experienced Now increasingly with, and I"m gonna be very critical about it so I hope no one is offended but with the advent of computer aided design and the technologies associated with that, you can build almost anything that you can design That doesn't mean you build good things It means you build things that the iconic, that may brand a city or a site but it very little attention is paid to the way moving through that space And I think that's a valid criticism of architecture And they're many architects that you know, that don't want to do that, but they're often are forced to do that also by the economic realities of the developers, right? I think what we tried to do as product designers is try to look at how we can create kits and parts that help to facilitate dealing with those points of contact or develop solutions that allow people to overcome barriers that can't be designed away, such as, I don't know sand on a beach, right? But, I do think that a lot more collaboration needs to happen. Not just beween industrial designers, interior designers, and architects but city planners and politicians and people who design legislation, right? Any other questions? I see... Picking up on your point about Not just legislators and policy because I think that going across disciplines Ok, let me put it a different way. I'm a parent of 26 year old who's always used a wheelchair. And there's an assumption that there's curb cuts But they're not there, 90 percent of the time. And There's also the funding issue and there's also the design and planning of entitlements and budgets And what I think happens that's very discouraging, is we know they're good products out there. We can't get them We can't get the budgets and the people in the field that should be making modifications more easily obtained because insurance policy center of goods have reduced and it seems to me harder than ever before to do what you've explained. And that's with a lot of advocacy. And I have wanted to bring attention to the fact that the plans that states are offering which supposedly are customized and individualized, the design of that plan I think is gone back in time and does not reflect inclusion, it's all in the rhetoric But very difficult to implement So, I just wanted to pick up on that I did have a specific question on the wheelchair that's in the museum I was curious about the front wheel and the position of that because the radius of how that turns takes up a great deal of space Obviously for what you've designed it for it's probably less of an issue but if a person had a wheelchair similar to that here, getting through a doorway turning in the space, the bathrooms, or whatever would be very difficult and I wonder if you've addressed that at all because the motion of not having for many people with physical disabilities who can't manipulate the wheels that's a marvelous advantage. But the long frontal wheel is a problem So... If that makes sense. The wheelchair was designed primarily to overcome obstacles in the environment and general environment It also does navigate in tight spaces in fact the levers come off and it's quite narrow to allow it to fairly narrow spaces because the objective was to allow people to be able to work in any environment, right? It does turn in a surprisingly tight way. The wheelchair that we designed, so the higher end wheelchaire was really designed for outdoor use. It's really for people want to go out into the wild in difficult terrain Ok, we'll take the next two questions together and then open it up to the panel to answer. i'd like to thank all of you. I think all of your designs are tremendous and thank you for coming this evening and shariing your products with is. The gentleman in the middle What's your name, I'm sorry. Scott Summit I think what you're doing is tremendous as we had talked about is, as Amy had talked about in the beginning a lot of stigmatism regarding their disability And that happens with every generation you know people might look at someone in a wheelchair and that's already fading now, but maybe 10, 20 years ago you would say well you belong in a nursing home or something, because they had a wheelchair So, a lot of times people would almost wish that their wheelchair would vanish That they could still be the same person, obviously they didn't to use a wheelchair but that people wouldn't see that in them A lot of the products that you've created or that you've shown this evening allow a lot of people to heal without feeling embarresed because they're injured, so I definately commend you for what you're doing. Amy I thank you for explaining about the concept of the ADA and universal design in general and how it helps people. I want to go to Ms Cindy Linton's question in regards to architecture When it comes to designing I don't think we I don't think we should allow a computer to design for humans. Obviously it's a human who is controlling the computer to design, similar to all of what you've created. You created your designs with the aid of a computer and it helped assist you But, I think if we have modern invention currently such as a beach. If a wheelchair user wants to go to a beach, there are inventions now such as Matt's Or beach wheelchairs that allow people to across the beach, be with their families. It's about inclusion So, I think when it comes to architectural design if they follow the basic rules of the ADA, it allows for everyone to use it, so when we're talking about universal design, everyone can use it I think it comes to the designer to kind of think outside the box, to say hey if this is universally designed and we followed the rules that had been use it. Wheelchair users especially because of their mobility impairments, but I think that a lot of times, going forward when we have new construction everyone should follow that universal design guideline Because no one would lose, similar to all of the products that you've created. It's for use for everyone so that everyone can enjoy. And it even comes down to some of the buildings that we go to, and I think we need to We need to raise above the level of Oh well, it's not that accessible. We couldn't do that Yeah, you can do that. It's just behind the person who is putting it together to do it. But I definately want to commend all of you for your designs and your inventions I hope that you continue to invent more and to help people. To be themselves Thank you for that. And then we have one more question and then we'll answer and then, unfortunately we have to wrap up also because we... the interpreter need to leave in a couple of minutes But thank you all so much for your questions, so All right, here. The previous people, I want to say this is a really excellent presentation I didn't know what to expect but you've covered quite a great area I do a blog on older woman's issues and that's because I'm having older woman's issues myself. Several years ago, I had foot surgery. And I needed a cane. And it was so boring I went to Staples and I bought polka dots Adhesive polka dots included on my cane And 2 years ago, I broke my wrist And then the brace was so boring that I bought a sock with Marilyn Monroe on it and I cut off the end and I put that over the brace so that while looking at it So, all this really resonates with me and I appreciate what you're doing. I have one further issue which is scoliosis. I was diagnosed as a kid but I didn't have it treated so I still have it today anjd most of my life it hasn't really been an issue But as you get older, you lose your bone density and you start to get Dowager's hump bla bla bla And thinkng the reason I came here tonight actually was because of Scott Summit's design for the young people with scoliosis. I understand that braces don't work for people of my age, but I just want to everybody's ear. I don't know if anything is being done in this area but I don't know. Could I be a guinia pig? Could I be a consultant, if anybody plans on doing anything about this. We don't have an age limit, one way or another For corrective idiopathic scolosis, it really is only effective during the pubescent period of skeletal maturity. But for an overall comfort or to come [inaudible] That can be done at any age to improve comfort And then we have been working with people of all ages for that So, it's certainly is not a age defined treatment All right, thank you. Thanks everyone [applause] And thanks again to Allen for organizing the panel And We'll all be here if folks want to talk to us individually, I think so... Thanks for coming.