Revisited: Pattie Moore
The Berkeley Center for New Media joined Pattie Moore, the first woman to graduate from the Rochester Institute for Technology as a product designer, on the night of April 8th to discuss product design equality.
Moore started off the night with a slideshow introducing her family, which became essential to understanding the different themes she addresses and who she has in mind when designing. One of the themes she speaks about is empathy. She explains her experience traveling through Europe dressed up as a senior citizen. Moore describes the kindness and cruelty she encounters and the effect it has had on her philosophies as a product designer.
Moore goes on to describe her belief that people are not "handicapped." She claims to not design for âhandicaps,â but rather for people whose capabilities have changed.
To emphasize her lesson on empathy, Moore ends the lecture with a poem found among the possessions of an aged lady who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital. The poem addresses the treatment the elderly woman faces from nurses in the ward. Finally, Moore ends her talk on the note that with product design "we are trying to create choice."