In navigating the challenges of contemporary crises, individuals with disabilities often bear a disproportionate burden, particularly exacerbated by the isolation intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. This project seeks to reshape the narrative by exploring innovative and user-initiated design approaches within the disability community, framed through the lens of "design care." Living with a disability provides a unique vantage point, serving as a daily testing ground for innovation. This project aims to highlight the differences between a caretaker's lens and a user's lens, recognizing that their distinct goals, wants, and needs necessitate personalized design solutions.
How can the integration of adaptive devices into home environments, framed within the concept of "design care," empower individuals with disabilities to enhance their independence, drawing on what community members have made for themselves?
This project will delve into how the disability community organizes space and moves through their homes and public spaces, considering the nuanced distinctions between a caretaker's perspective and the user's lived experience. Specifically, it will begin with a focus on the unique spatial challenges presented by retrofitting my grandparents' old house, with an emphasis on designing something that gives them agency. This endeavor is deeply personal, centered around making spaces for my grandparents. The project will explore their distinctive way of organizing space, moving through it, and designing solutions that provide tangible agency. It addresses a very tangible problem with equally tangible solutions.
The research will employ Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods to understand the intricacies of "design care" and the differences between caretaker and user goals.
Written Conclusions on Design Care:
Archive of Designs:
Physical Prototypes with a Design Care Approach:
Design Story/Case Study:
This project aspires to contribute to a paradigm shift in design thinking, promoting "design care" as a powerful tool for enhancing the agency for those with disabilities. By emphasizing personalized solutions and acknowledging the distinctions between caretaker and user perspectives, this project seeks to inspire a diverse audience, including the unique challenges of retrofitting a family home, caring for aging adults, aging, acquiring a disability, daily interactions on innovations created by oneself for oneself to accomplish goals and needs, making spaces tailored for my grandma according to her desires. It addresses not just the abstract concept of space but the very tangible problem of how we organize and move through our space, offering equally tangible solutions.
In the face of contemporary challenges, individuals with disabilities contend with obstacles often exacerbated by societal structures. This essay explores an innovative and user-initiated design approach within the disability community, framed through the lens of "design care." Departing from traditional design methodologies, this approach emphasizes daily experimentation and small, incremental changes that empower users to shape their own environments.
Design care, as presented in this essay, prioritizes personalized design solutions over generic, one-size-fits-all approaches. Unlike conventional design thinking and human-centered design, which involve a limited number of interactions with users, design care embraces a continuous, user-initiated process that fosters agency, inclusivity, and user-generated ideas. Both the person with a disability and others in the home, such as caregivers, embark on this journey together, guided by the preferences and ideas of the person with a disability.
Living with a disability provides a unique vantage point, serving as a daily testing ground for innovation. Individuals with disabilities become master innovators, crafting solutions to navigate environments and systems not initially designed with their needs in mind. This user-initiated, design-for-one process encourages continuous experimentation, incremental adjustments, and the creation of adaptive objects and solutions that exemplify the creativity and resourcefulness of the disability community.
This project delves into how the disability community organizes space and moves through their homes and public spaces, considering the nuanced distinctions between a caretaker's perspective and the user's lived experience. Specifically, the focus is on the unique spatial challenges presented by retrofitting my grandparents' old house, with an emphasis on designing something that gives them agency. This endeavor is deeply personal, centered around creating spaces for my grandparents, exploring their distinctive way of organizing space, moving through it, and designing solutions that provide tangible agency, addressing a very tangible problem with equally tangible solutions.
“Design care" is a framework emphasizing the importance of personalized design solutions.
I worked with my grandparents to draw maps of their house, depicting how each person moved through it from their perspective, including caregivers and my grandparents. Together, we created diagrams of each room, noting every innovation introduced by either my grandparents or family member caretakers. Instances of adaptive technology in their home were documented, analyzing how these new elements positively influenced the space. Annotations were made for every place where preferences were not expressed, desires were unmet, and a desire for engagement in a design process to effect change was noted. This user-initiated approach explored problems as identified by my grandparents, allowing for the collection of key insights and conclusions from both caretaker and user perspectives, with a specific focus on retrofitting the family home for my grandma and grandpa.
My grandma and I examined how the home appears to shrink for my grandma, who cannot use most of the house. Starting with the whole floor plan of the house, we mapped the spaces she used to move in and what she does now. The chairs she spends the most time in were analyzed, along with the radius of what she can reach. Disability limits her body’s movements, and we annotated what she can and cannot reach, considering the strategic placement of objects.
In these sketches, we explored both further potential for making spaces for my grandparents and their unique way of making space.
There is a current moment in in-home healthcare where something that previously extended outside of the home is now within it. My grandparents possess their own desires and needs to change about their space. Findings and implications for future design methodologies include viewing Design as Care alongside other theories of care, such as healthcare and homecare. Many objects associated with those things need recalibration due to disability and aging, which is why design care stems from homecare and healthcare.
This project contributes to a paradigm shift in design thinking by advocating for "design care" as a tool for enhancing agency within the disability community. Prioritizing personalized solutions and acknowledging the distinctions between caretaker and user perspectives, as well as the daily interactions that drive innovations created by and for individuals with disabilities and their families, design care stands as a holistic and collaborative approach. In addressing the tangible problems of how we organize and move through our spaces, design as care offers equally tangible solutions that empower individuals to live with dignity and agency.