When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now ... will it all still work? In less than 10 minutes yesterday, I was transformed from a 29-year-old in reasonable nick to a decrepit, bone-rattling old man pushing 80. I had seen the future. And it was terrifying.

I was robbed of my youth in an experiment to test a new suit that simulates the agonies and deprivations of disability in the modern world. The 'mobility-restricting suit' is intended to give architects first-hand warnings of how difficult it can be to get around their buildings.

It gives everyone else a sharp shock about what happens when joints start to ache, vital bits cease to function and the Grim Reaper comes knocking. You will think twice before ever again cursing a pensioner for being slow with his bus fare.

At Derby City General Hospital, I became one of the first guinea pigs to be strapped into the suit by Howard Jeffrey, an affable 50-year-old design manager who put it together for less than £1,000. After donning a basic blue cotton uniform, I felt my body tighten as I was bound into an 'abdominal truss', knees and elbows stiffen as plastic splints were Velcro-ed into place and my neck lose its mobility inside the disquietingly named 'Adam's Collar'. I felt I had grown old by about 30 years, or just flown on a low-cost airline.

Then came some final, personal touches that, upped a few notches, might win admiring glances from torturers. I was ordered to wear yellow goggles with lenses deliberately scratched 'to imitate cataracts' and the world became a less colourful, less inviting place.

I put on surgical gloves to restrain my hands and had coins taped to the inside of my fingers so I could no longer clench my fists and gripping anything became a pain. On my feet were socks with coat buttons attached on the bottom, creating arthritis in the feet which sufferers liken to 'walking on marbles or broken glass'.

The use of household objects had a ring of Blue Peter and to spectators I looked like a cross between Yuri Gagarin and an inmate from Guantánamo Bay. But Jeffrey, of Skanska Integrated Projects, cares only about the inner experience of the suit-wearer. 'Mobility is one of those things you take for granted until it's gone,' he said. 'People in their twenties and thirties put this suit on and immediately seem old.'

My first challenge was to open a door while using a Zimmer frame. Bent over and shuffling forward, the harder I gripped the more the coins dug into my flesh. I pushed at the door only to find it swinging back, threatening to bash my nose. Eventually I heaved myself inside, making a mental note to always hold doors open for those older than myself.

I struggled on to a bed, dragging my legs which no longer bent as they once did and sat up to read a novel and drink a cup of tea. Even these everyday tasks became Herculean endeavours. The splint strapped to my left elbow prevented me from raising the cup to my lips, forcing me to twist awkwardly forward. The fudgy goggle vision took away the pleasure reading had always been. Trying to reach over for a paper towel was another bridge too far.

I struggled into a wheelchair - relieved to take my weight off those buttons pressing into the soles of my feet - and made for the bathroom, crashing into the door way on my way in. Through the disconcerting bump as I got to the shower, which was not quite flush with the floor, I could barely reach the showerhead and had to brake hard to stop rolling forward.

Even standing up, sitting down or walking had become, if not painful, then an energy-sapping mission. In the space of 70 minutes I was experiencing what usually creeps up on us with the ravages of time. I felt frustrated, dispirited and trapped. I wanted to get up, walk free and smell the coffee, but the mobility-restricting suit will not allow it. Instead, it forces you to consider the structural changes, large and small that can ease the passage of daily life.

With pensioners accounting for nine in 10 hospital patients, architects from Capita Symonds are already using the suit to help make the planned £333 million replacement for the hospital as user-friendly as possible. Jeffrey, from Leeds, added: 'I had a male and female architect wear it and they got an appreciation of difficulties patients will have. They immediately made alterations to their design plans.

'It can be seemingly small things, such as not having wardrobes in a corner where they are difficult to get to or putting towels within easy reach. Hospital colours tend to be bland. One architect described wearing the goggles for 20 minutes as like being in a fog. He speculated that if you are in hospital for a while you would have a sense of personal isolation.'

Jeffrey admitted he was still making modifications to the suit to pile on the discomfort: 'We're working on making the hips harder so you can't spring out of bed.'

But I, at long last, was able to rip of the Velcro, remove the goggles and cast my feet-busting socks to the wind. I had stared into the abyss of my own destiny, a creaking, broken-down body, but had the luxury of returning to my roaring twenties. Half a century from now, I will not be so lucky.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.