Watch out for discriminatory design

The objects we use and the spaces we inhabit send us messages about who’s important, who’s not, who fits best here, who’s safe, and who needs to ask for help

Kathryn H. Anthony, Ph.D., ACSA Distinguished Professor, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author

In the spring of 1989, I went to Vienna on a school trip. Our German teacher was an energetic forty-something who seemed to possess the keys to the city. She took us to Café Hawelka, a historic meeting point for writers and artists, where Josephine Hawelka, the co-founder, was still serving her guests. She walked us to the Spanish Riding School and to the underground Imperial Crypt, the burial site of the Habsburgs. She pointed out the little bunch of violets on the grave of Marie Louise, the second wife of Napoleon and then Duchess of Parma, after his defeat at Waterloo. The Italian city keeps sending her the flowers she loved as a gift of gratitude. 

If all these experiences contributed to make me fall in love with the intellectual beauty of Vienna, the encounter with the public housing designed by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser was filed in a brain folder titled “Smart alternative solutions.” The fifty-flat complex is a collage of fluid lines, hanging gardens, colorful exterior with ceramic inserts that recall the paintings of Mondrian, paired with the ingenuity of a child’s drawing. When the project “Reversible Destiny Lofts” came out in 2005, I was ready to hear the call of the quirky work of the artists and architects duo Arakawa and Madeline Gins. With their uneven floors, irregularly shaped interiors, colorful surfaces and oddly positioned switches, the apartments were designed to stimulate its inhabitants mentally and physically and, in the intentions of the artists, postpone decline. Those who lived in this type of flats, like the filmmaker Nobu Yamaoka interviewed last year by The New York Times, referred to an increase in their energy levels, weight loss, and better health.

We construct our identity through interactions, but we tend to take our physical reality for granted. So I wondered, if an educator like Maria Montessori designed child-size furniture to promote confidence in her little students, do our objects and structures foster an ageist view? Recalling the alternative works of Hundertwasser and Arakawa and Gins, I got in contact with Professor Kathryn Anthony, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to discuss the subtle messages we receive and adopt from design. Professor Anthony is author of Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession (University of Illinois Press, 2001), a book focused on women and persons of color as critics, consumers, and creators of the built environment and, more recently, of Defined by Design: The Surprising Power of Hidden Gender, Age, and Body Bias in Everyday Products and Places (Prometheus Books, 2017). 

Can you tell us something about your career in academics?

My interest has always been about how spaces and places influence people. I’ve been teaching about architecture and design for over forty years. My academic career began as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of California at Berkeley, where I received my Ph.D. with a specialty in social and cultural factors in design. I taught part-time at San Francisco State University, and later as a full-time faculty member at California State Polytechnic University Pomona, before moving to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I have taught for the past 36 years. I am now the longest-serving female faculty member in the history of the School of Architecture. 

How did you start to notice the hidden bias in design? 

I think I’ve always noticed hidden biases in design. They are often associated with “points of pain.” These can include situations that are mildly annoying, inconvenient, painful, or cause injury – or even worse, death. 

As part of the research for Defined by Design, for a number of years I gave a fascinating assignment for my seminar students. I asked each of them to interview someone who is different from you – in gender, age, or body size—and ask them if they believe they are either advantaged or disadvantaged by design by a particular product or place. Then repeat the same exercise with someone else. The project started to mushroom. 

And then I followed up by doing hundreds of interviews of my own over the next several years. I made it a point to talk with lots of people who looked very different from me. Many were total strangers whom I’d never met before. With each answer came more questions that made me want to find out more, and to see how widespread, if at all, were the problems they described. 

Also, as a 5’2” female, I’d experienced plenty of issues of my own. 

Can you share some examples of the embedded design bias you wrote about? 

Here are just a few. How tall is your bed? If you’ve got a high poster bed, a canopy bed, or a sleigh bed, or just a plain tall bed and a tall mattress you might be sleeping on a powder keg. Tall beds and tall mattresses may work just fine for tall people who are in tip-top physical shape! But if you’re not, you might be one of the thousands of people who are seriously injured when they get up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night, falling out of their own bed. The design of tall beds disadvantages and endangers shorter people, elderly people, and children. 

When it comes to residential injuries and falling out of bed, while they do keep track of patient statistics, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and hospital medical records fail to keep track of one of the most important details of all: the design, model, and make of the bed that led to the fall. And where are the warnings—especially for short and elderly people—that should accompany these beds when they are sold? 

Take a look around your kitchen. Can you reach all the cabinets? Even those cabinets at the very top? And where is your microwave installed? If you can’t reach these, or need a small step stool, chances are that the architect, builder, or kitchen designer wasn’t thinking of someone your size. And chances are you are a shorter female. Or a child. We lose height as we age, so older people - both men and women- are shorter than they used to be. You might have found it easy to reach the top of the cabinets when you were 35, but those same cabinets will likely present a greater challenge when your are age 75 or 85. 

People over the age of 60 have the highest share of car ownership both in the US and UK, but I haven’t noticed any increase in inclusivity in the design of vehicles. What is your take?

You might think of your car as a temporary living space. Most of us identify with our cars in a special way. If we’re lucky we can afford to select the car that fits us best. When we test drive cars, making that all-important decision about which one to buy, we can feel which ergonomic designs fit us best - and which ones don’t. Many shorter or older persons have trouble seeing over the dashboard or reaching all the controls, creating dangerous driving conditions. This can be a special problem for travelers at car rentals, where selections, models and makes of cars are limited. 

Many older people are overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of car dashboards – too many choices, too many buttons to press, too many controls to figure out. If they are in a car accident and suddenly have to replace their vehicle, many people would prefer to purchase an exact replica of the car they just said goodbye to – the one they already learned and felt comfortable driving. 

Children, shorter adults, and elderly often struggle to step in and out of taller vehicles like jeeps and pickup trucks, or conversely, sports cars that sit low to the ground. The difficulties apply even to parking garages and parking lots with automated payment machines. Shorter persons and elderly persons are challenged to stretch high enough or far enough to insert their credit card. 

Does design fail different categories (age, gender, ability) in different ways or does design let these users equally down? 

Each of these biases is different and affects individuals in disparate ways. It’s hard to say which one is worse than the other. When they happen to you personally, they definitely let you down. Many of these biases are intertwined and it’s sometimes difficult to tease out one from the other. 

The design of the clothes we wear, the products we use, as well as our homes, our cars, our work spaces, public transportation, public restrooms, and other spaces all send us messages about who’s important, who’s not, who fits best here, who doesn’t, who’s comfortable, who’s not, who’s safe, who is not, and who needs to ask for help. 

While I was in elementary school, my best friend, Barbara, was left-handed. I remember watching what a challenge it was for her to use notebooks, scissors, and other everyday products. Lefties are still disadvantaged by design as adults in countless ways.

Many hidden gender, age and body biases in the design of clothes, products and spaces surround us every day. If they affect you personally, most likely you know what they are. You tend to blame yourself, when it’s really not your fault. It’s a faulty design! 

And if they don’t affect you personally, you may not even be aware of them at all. 

Do the silent workings of design and architecture impact our worldview? Are there any studies about this? 

Yes I believe they do. The field of environment and behavior is replete with research that demonstrates that how spaces and places are designed can have positive or negative impacts on our worldview, our health and well-being. 

The Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), a professional organization to which I belong, just celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. EDRA members have produced decades of research documenting how design impacts us. In China, the Environment-Behavior Research Association (EBRA) has a long history of conducting research about how design affects people. The vast building boom that has taken place throughout Chinese cities in recent decades has prompted an unprecedented need for this type of research. Public officials are especially interested to find out how people are reacting to newly opened buildings and public spaces. 

The educator Maria Montessori designed small forniture to promote confidence and develop potential of the children. Do everyday objects have the power to shape our self-perception even as adults? 

Yes they definitely do. People need to feel independent, empowered and in control of their immediate environment. When design works well, we usually are not even aware of it. When it doesn’t, we tend to blame ourselves, when really the design is the problem. 

What design biases impact on the perception of aging the most? 

Design biases that can have the greatest impact on people who are aging are those that make us feel incompetent or incapable of doing the things we used to do. They are constant reminders that we are slowly going downhill. 

One of my favorite examples of poor design that I describe in Defined by Design is the plastic clamshell packaging that encases many products like batteries, electric toothbrushes, and children’s toys. For far too many people, clamshell packaging is near impossible to open, inducing what we call “wrap rage.” In a state of desperation, we are forced to use knives, razor blades, box cutters or scissors. 

What shocked me was the high number and severity of injuries that can result just from trying to open a package. Those injuries include amputated fingers and severed tendons. 

I recall reading that in one year alone in the USA, 6,000 emergency room hospital visits were due to patients injuring themselves while trying to open difficult packaging. And that’s just those who had to go to the hospital. No doubt thousands inadvertently stab or cut themselves at home but don’t require a hospital visit. 

Child-proof jars have become adult-proof jars as well, often requiring excessive wrist strength and a strong grip which many older persons no longer have. 

How do you explain the almost complete lack of attractive products for older adults? 

I believe in many countries this reflects a youth culture that glorifies the young and devalues the elderly. It’s also not smart. Many older persons have more money available than they did when they were younger, and they would buy more attractive products if only they were available. 

Do the lack of attractive products and the embedded stigma in older adults’ products determine assumptions on their self-worth (or the lack thereof) amongst the users? 

Yes, the design of these products sends messages to us. When design choices for products aimed at older adults are limited, the message conveyed is that older people are not important – and do not deserve any better. 

Can being aware of these dynamics that surround us be a way to protect us from the limiting effects of non-inclusive design? 

Awareness is key. Keeping our eyes and ears open to these dynamics makes us smarter consumers of the world around us. Consumers should insist on safer, healthier designs that reduce or eliminate gender, age, and body biases. They can vote with their wallets by buying well-designed products, as well as lobbying manufacturers, government officials, school administrators, and employers for better product design and healthier neighborhoods, schools and workplaces.