A Study on Difficulities in Using Closet for the Elderly-A Case Study on the Closet of Ruentfu Elder House

• Main Authors: Shin-Nung Shen, 沈士農
• Other Authors: Chi-Wu Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48s8gn

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 創新設計研究所 === 95 === The over-65-year-old population is rapidly growing in Taiwan. As the numbers increase, many problems occurred. According to a survey, many elders would like to improve the living environment of their bedrooms. One will find that the use of closet in the bedroom is often ignored. Most elders often use the closet they bought when they were young, ready-made products or custom-made ones by designers. However, as they grow older, their body movements are not as clever as they were young. They will find some difficulitiy when they are using closet. Thus, looking into difficulity factors and proposing ideas to improve the closet design to let our elders can use the closet in a more proper and convenient way are the main focus of this study. Through literature review, observation, interview, questionnaire, and visiting their residences, it enables the researcher to find out the present status and behavior for the elderly when using closet.Furthermore, through various experiments, the inconvenient factors for the elderly when using closet can be identified and then led to a conclusion so that improvement can be proposed. The findings include: 1. For female and male elders, the differences in height and age can lead to different settings of the height for coat hangers. It is found that the easiest height to take cloth is from 1062 to 1730mm 2. For shelves in the closet, the most desirable height for elders is from 1666 to 992mm. 3. The heights for drawers (top) are from 834 to 450mm. 4. As for handles, it is suggested to use rectangular shape with rounded edges, which is easy to grip. In addition, handles with different colors are easy for the elderly to tell from one and other and wooden handles are more comfortable than metal ones in terms of material.