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.