Walking a mile in another’s shoes: The impact of wearing an Age Suit

The “Age Suit” described in this article was developed to enable future designers, business leaders, and engineers to experience navigating the world as many older adults must. Tools such as this Age Suit offer the opportunity to “walk a mile” in another’s shoes to develop empathy that can result in better design of spaces, goods, and services to meet the needs of a rapidly growing older population. This work first examined, through a series of clinical tests, whether younger adults’ physical capacities were reduced in a direction consistent with aging by wearing a suit developed by the MIT AgeLab. An experiential learning task was then completed with the suit to understand its impact on completion of an instrumental activity of daily living. Results showed that younger adults wearing the suit experienced changes in task performance consistent with expected changes associated with aging. Participants’ self-reports from the experiential learning task indicated that they were able to empathize with older adults regarding some issues they face while completing a grocery shopping task. Future research with the suit should involve a wider range of individuals from the population and examine what effect participants’ levels of fitness have on the experience of wearing the suit.