"Co-Design a product (-system service) to support persons with special needs in daily life."
Our roadmap
This project focused on the development of assistive technology for specific users through co-design alongside participants with disabilities. As you will see in this portfolio, the project consists of 3 distinct stages: Contextual Research, Co-Design and Prototyping, and Broadening.
Our group was paired with a participant who had a stroke which affected the mobility and dexterity of the left side of his body. In the interest of privacy, the participant will repair anonymously and will only be referred to by an alias.
In this portfolio you will find information and explanations about our design methods and important decisions we made in developing our final products.
What is co design?
This project centered around employing the process of co-design in designing for specific users. Co-design, also called participatory design, has been defined by the Stratos Innovation group as “act of creating with stakeholders specifically within the design development process to ensure the results meet their needs and are usable” (Group, 2016).
This process originated in Scandinavia between the 1970s and 1980s, when trade unions reacted negatively to being omitted from the design process of technologies they would work with (natematias, 2011). As a reaction to this negative reaction, the process of co-design was developed to enable all the stakeholders involved to share their different insights on the problem and their different needs for the solution. The cooperation created by co-design results in thoughtful design, which satisfies all involved the stakeholders (Group, 2016).
Human centered design
The focus given to co-designing with and for people with disabilities in this project made human centered design (HCD) an important part of our process. As described by IDEO in “The Field Guide to Human-Centred Design”, ‘Human centered design offers problem solvers of any stripe a chance to design with communities, to deeply understand the people they’re looking to serve, to dream up scores of ideas, and to create innovative new solutions rooted in people’s actual needs.’ (IDEO, 2015, para. 1)
To ensure an effective application of HCD in our design, we worked closely with our participant through all stages of the project. Applying the principle of HCD, though frequent meetings and activities with our participant, helped us understand the specific needs which had to be addressed in our designs.
References
Co-Design
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Group, S. I. (2016, October 15). Co-design: A Powerful Force for Creativity and Collaboration. Medium. https://medium.com/@thestratosgroup/co-design-a-powerful-force-for-creativity-and-collaboration-bed1e0f13d46
Human centered design
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IDEO (Ed.). (2015). The field guide to human-centered design: Design kit (1st. ed). IDEO.
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