DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL SURVEY ON AGING AND THE DOMESTIC BATHROOM: THE LIVABLE BATHROOMS SURVEY

Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco Cantamessa, Dorian Marjanovic, Monica Bordegoni
Author: Mintzes, Alicia; Bridge, Catherine; Demirbilek, Oya
Series: ICED
Institution: University of New South Wales, Australia
Section: Design for Life
Page(s): 575-584
ISBN: 978-1-904670-64-3
ISSN: 2220-4334

Abstract

A national survey on older Australians and their domestic bathrooms has been designed and implemented to collect a large-scale dataset on older Australians relating to their needs and abilities within bathroom environments. This survey is the first of it’s kind, in terms of it’s focus and it’s scale. It was mailed out to a stratified random sample of 16,524 people over the age of 60, using the Australian Electoral Roll. This survey has developed a core set of items to measure the suitability of older people’s bathrooms in order to provide useful information and insight to design better bathrooms for ageing in place. Older people participated in the survey development to provide insight and advice using their personal experience and expertise. This paper describes the strategies and processes used to develop the content of the survey, in order to overcome existing data limitations. Survey development was carried out in three phases: development, testing and finalising. The data gathered has since been used to develop new bathroom products and underpins better policy and design standards to support population ageing and the domestic bathroom of the future that better enables ‘ageing in place’.

Keywords: Collaborative Design, Inclusive Design, User Centred Design, Ageing In Place, Bathroom Design

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