Glen Hougan is part of the design faculty at NSCAD University and as part of his teaching he invented an ‘age suit’. The suit gave younger people the opportunity to look at life though an older person’s lens. They were then invited to design for dignity, not for stereotype. Why shouldn’t adaptive products be beautiful? Does function always have to dominate form? Glen Hougan poses some excellent questions about who we really design for.
Glen Hougan is an industrial/product and service designer whose background is in the area of human factors, user experience, product development, and design thinking. His research and work in the area of design for health and ageing has been covered in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the PBS series Life Part 2, CBC’s radio program Spark. He is a proponent of integrative design and advocate for design thinking in healthcare. His current research focuses around designing for dignity and ageism in design.
Glen Hougan holds a BES from the University of Waterloo and an MEDes from the University of Calgary. He is an industrial/product and service designer with a focus on designing for dignity and ageism in design. His research involves developing new products to help the aging population and he has received international media coverage for his work. He is a proponent of integrative design and an advocate for design thinking in health care.
Glen Hougan is an industrial/product and service designer whose background is in the area of human factors, user experience, product development, and design thinking. His research and work in the area of design for health and ageing has been covered in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the PBS series Life Part 2, CBC’s radio program Spark. He is a proponent of integrative design and advocate for design thinking in healthcare. His current research focuses around designing for dignity and ageism in design.
In 2012 he was awarded the first ever Research Fellowship in Healthcare Innovations from the Center for Innovation (CFI), at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. In 2010 he was made the first ever Sun Life Financial Chair in Design in Health and Aging. This is one of three Chairs Sun Life Financial funds across Canada in support of innovative research.
He is also principal of Wellspan Research and Design. Since 2008 this design consultancy has focused on healthcare issues and design for an aging population and offers design research, product development services and workshops in those areas.