RMV 20 Barbara Knickerbocker Beskind: You Can Design Aging

Barbara has been designing her life for almost a century, with a stint at global design firm IDEO starting when she was just 93-years-old. After seeing founder David Kelley featured on an episode of 60 Minutes, Barbara wrote to the company offering to help design for aging and low-vision populations. Hailing from the field of occupational therapy, after training through the U.S. Army’s War Emergency Course, and serving for 20 years before retiring as a major in 1966, Barbara’s own experience with macular degeneration led her to design glasses to help her and others with the condition. 

In this episode of Results May Vary, Barbara shares her fascinating story of personal reinvention, and how rather than allowing her illnesses and advanced age to hold her back, she simply used them as new constraints to redesign her life around.

RMV 16 Dr. Mick Smyer: You Can Design Climate Action

On the newest episode of Results May Vary, we introduce you to aging and climate change expert, Dr. Mick Smyer, and his Graying Green movement, which aims to engage more older adults in taking impactful action on climate change.

Among his many accomplishments, Mick is the former Provost and a current Professor of Psychology at Bucknell University. In addition, currently on his second year of sabbatical, he is working on Graying Green as a Civic Innovation Fellow at Stanford d.school, learning the power of applying design thinking to social activism. And maybe most impressive are his prodigious skills as a washboard player with New Orleans’ own Rustical Quality String Band.

Show Links

Follow Mick on Twitter

Old People Don't Care About Climate Change is Mick's Facebook page prototype for one of his d.school assignments. 

Before The Flood is the powerful National Geographic documentary starring Leonardo DiCaprio as he travels the world to witness climate change firsthand.

Laura Carstensen, author of A Long Bright Future, gives a compelling TEDTalk on how people become happier as they age.

Yale's Program on Climate Change Communication conducts scientific studies on public opinion and behavior; informs the decision-making of governments, media, companies, and advocates; educates the public about climate change; and helps build public and political will for climate action.