Every Thursday, Barbara Beskind arrives for work at the offices of design and innovation consultancy Ideo in San Francisco. A former occupational therapist, Beskind has been working at the firm for a couple of years, specialising in designs for ageing. She’s invented wearable airbags to guard against falls, and eyeglasses featuring cameras and speakers to help dementia sufferers identify people and places around them. Beskind is opinionated, passionate, driven – and she’s 91 years old.

Beskind isn’t typical, yet she’s symptomatic of a slow but radical shift in expectations of old age from design firms, brands, startups, governments and seniors themselves. Healthier lifestyles and extraordinary advances in medicine mean life expectancy has risen dramatically. A man born in 1901 could expect to live to 45; now men are likely to live well into their 80s. It’s an increasing rate, too: everyday life expectancy in the developed world rises by five hours.