Browsing by Subject "Independence"
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Item Open Access Elderly-friendly inclusive urban environments: learning from Ankara(Open House International Association, 2013-03) Afacan, YaseminThe aging population and their expectations have become a growing concern in Turkey as in other countries. This study aims to investigate interactions/relationships between the needs, demands and expectations of Turkish elderly and inclusive urban design principles. It tries to answer the research question: how the inclusive urban life could improve elderly life and contribute to achieve an active aging process. An exploratory study was conducted with a total of 100 randomly selected elderly between the ages 65-95 (45 female and 55 male) from the City Centre of Ankara. A survey instrument based on the streets for life' concept (Burton & Mitchell 2006) was developed to gather data. The participants were asked to identify how important inclusive urban design features were in understanding, using and navigating within an urban environment. The findings of the study suggest that an inclusive open environment allows elderly people to feel safer, and thus encourage more regular use of urban space. Overall the results highlight two important insights, first that accessibility is inevitable for increasing the chance of the aging population to participate in the mainstream of community life and second, plain and simple signage is necessary to achieve more liveable urban environments. The study concludes the most important physical requirements and social requirements for elderly people.Item Open Access Universal product design involving elderly users: a participatory design model(Elsevier, 2004-07) Demirbilek, O.; Demirkan, H.Recent studies have shown that people prefer to age in their familiar environments, thus guiding designers to provide a safe and functionally appropriate environment for ageing people, regardless of their physical conditions or limitations. Therefore, a participatory design model is proposed where human beings can improve their quality of life by promoting independence, as well as safety, useability and attractiveness of the residence. Brainstorming, scenario building, unstructured interviews, sketching and videotaping are used as techniques in the participatory design sessions. Quality deployment matrices are employed to find the relationships between the elderly user's requirements and design specifications. A case study was devised to apply and test the conceptual model phase of the proposed model.