Clare Lawton

A Study of User Needs for the ‘Techno Kitchen’

A project, Transitions in Kitchen Living (TiKL) has been conducted to study kitchen histories and current use by older people. A multidisciplinary team developed a common interview methodology to collect people’s personal kitchen histories and their views on their current kitchen. Now and in the future ambient assistance and applied electronic technology might provide additional functionality to make kitchens easier to use for all ages. This paper relates some of these technical developments to user needs identified in the TiKL project and reports on the results of a survey to obtain older people’s views on them.

Older people's experiences of their kitchens: 2000 to 2010

Purpose – This paper aims to present the quantitative results based on a comparison and evaluation of older peoples experiences, needs and wants from their current kitchens, combining and comparing the results obtained from two studies conducted in 2000 and 2010 to see what progress has been made.Design/methodology/approach – A study in 2010 investigated the life‐long and contemporary experiences of kitchens of 48 people aged over 60 years of age. The research included detailed questionnaire interviews asking people about their experiences of living in their current kitchen. A previous study, conducted in 2000, asked many of the same questions of 22 people in the same age group.Findings – By combining and comparing the two sets of data it seems that only limited progress has been made in terms of kitchen design meeting the needs of older people between 2000 and 2010.Research limitations/implications – Owing to the small sizes of the samples it is not possible to compare the figures statistically or prese...