Understanding multi-sensory and inclusive design principles
How a trip to Cooper Hewitt expanded our knowledge of mobility challenges and technology.
Every summer, interns at Moment (which is now part of Verizon) solve real-world problems through a design-based research project. In the past, interns have worked with concepts like autonomous vehicles, Google Glass, virtual reality in education, and Voice UI.
For the 2018 summer project, the premise is to Design a near-future product or service that improves mobility for people with disabilities, using granular location data and other contextual information.
We’re still in the early stages of conceptualizing our project and over the past week, we’ve been completing research and narrowing the audience we’ll design for. After learning about the wide range of types of disabilities, analyzing infrastructural problems, and understanding the challenges of organizations like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, we ultimately decided to focus on people with vision impairments.
As part of our research process, we took a trip to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for the exhibition “Access + Ability,” which showcases prototypes and products specifically designed for people with impairments.
Bridging beauty and functionality in wearable technology
At the core, the pieces in the exhibition are technologically-advanced and serve their purpose of facilitating independent movement, and at the same time, they follow aesthetic principles. In particular, products like prosthetic leg covers and personalized canes, are highly customizable, which enable self-expression. These pieces have the potential to create a sense of empowerment for their wearers, and to some extent, the restoration of personal agency. In the company of aluminum, silicone, and thermoplastic, we witnessed a delicate intersection of fashion and technology.
What do we need to keep in mind, in order to design a product or service that could be as visually appealing as it was functional? How do we blend the elements together and ultimately pinpoint the sweet spot?
Exploring multi-sensory design
Next, we visited the sensory design lab on the museum’s third floor. As interns interested in designing for a blind/low vision (BLV) audience, we got to see a realm that extends beyond the conventional way of “viewing” at a museum. Instead, the pieces were holistic and interactive — stimulating all of our senses and inspiring us to expand our design repertoire.
If we, as humans, utilize more than just our eyes, why can’t art?
Oftentimes, people who lose the ability to use one sense can gain a hyper-ability in another sense. For example, those who lose their sight rely more on sound — their ears are sharper than the ears of those who can see. Certain materials can also activate different senses, and with deeper exploration, we can discover how to optimize the impact that our product will have on its users.
Maintaining an objective of inclusivity
On an individual scale, everyone has a different sensory repository. This is a quintessential element of the human condition, and that’s why inclusive design is so important. Within the BLV category alone, vision impairment encompasses moderate impairment, total blindness, and everything in between. The sheer diversity in condition severity makes it difficult to design a single device or one-size-fits-all product. Thus, as designers, we need to experiment generously and thoroughly, while thinking critically about user-profiling.
“Our greatest asset when we design is human diversity.”
—Tim Allen
Ultimately, sensory design is inclusive. It embraces users with different abilities and special needs. After viewing tactile braille maps and architectural layouts that increase mobility for blind people, we were inspired to design for our subset of the visually-impaired.
But we also saw pieces that would not only be beneficial for people with disabilities, but for able-bodied people as well — like utensils to minimize spilling for people with arthritis, grab bars designed for wheelchair users, and a smart voting booth with an audio controller for those hard of hearing. Hence, subtle adaptations to existing designs can integrate people with disabilities into societal structures, instead of providing an entirely separate way of conducting life. This is smart, inclusive design that breeds desegregation and champions equality.
Through inclusive design, we, as designers, can generate communication and navigation solutions for all people. As technology proliferates and improves the lives of the general public, we need to make sure that people with disabilities do not get left behind.
Darshan Alatar Patel, Lauren Fox, Alina Peng and Chanel Luu Hai are interns at Moment/Verizon in New York. Darshan is pursuing an MFA in Interaction Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Lauren is an incoming junior at Washington University in St. Louis pursuing a BFA in Communication Design, Alina is pursuing a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) with a Design Minor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chanel is pursuing an MFA in Design & Technology at Parsons School of Design. They’re currently exploring the intersection of mobility challenges and technology in urban environments. You can follow the team’s progress this summer on Momentary Exploration.
