Dare to Care: Compassionate Design

Catalog description

Physical ability is an important - and often overlooked - dimension of diversity. As a social construct, disability is frequently misunderstood as a medical condition, when in reality, it is society - s failure to provide access that disables people. This course focuses on how to recognize and challenge the systemic barriers that exclude disabled individuals, and on designing solutions that promote inclusion in everyday life. How do we as designers empower people of diverse physical abilities and provide them with means of self-expression? By challenging students to provide creative solutions to problems encountered by the disabled and focusing on the design process as a tangible means of engagement, I hope to empower students with tools useful in closing the divide between people with different ability levels. In Compassionate Design, students from any prospective major are invited to explore the engineering design process by examining the needs of persons with disabilities. Through invited guests, students will have the opportunity to directly engage people with different types of disabilities as a foundation to design products that address problems of motion and mobility, vision, speech and hearing. For example, in class, students will interview people who are deaf, blind, have cerebral palsy, or other disabling conditions. Students will then be asked, using the design tools they have been exposed to as part of the seminar, to create a particular component or device that enhances the quality of life for that user or users with similar limitations. Presentation skills are taught and emphasized as students will convey their designs to the class and instructors. Students will complete this seminar with a compassionate view toward design for the disabled, they will acquire a set of design tools that they can use to empower themselves and others in whatever direction…