AUD Design FrameworkPermalink
Occupational therapists modify mass-produced and universally-designed assistive technologies (ATs) to fulfill the specific needs of people with disabilities. We interviewed ten occupational therapists with experience in modifying ATs in order to understand adaptation processes. Our findings reveal the reasoning behind adaptation, common ATs that require adaptation, as well as the collaborative nature of adaptation. We propose a new framework called Adaptable Universal Design (AUD) that blends Universal Design with the need to adapt ATs in order to fulfill unique and specific user needs.
Relevant DisciplinesPermalink
Disciplines that were relevant for this project included assistive technologies (AT), product design, occupational therapy, IxD (interaction design), UX (user experience).
L. Aflatoony, S. Kolarić: One Size Doesn’t Fit All: On the Adaptable Universal Design of Assistive Technologies, full paper, Proceedings of the Design Society, DESIGN Conference, Cambridge University Press (2022). https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2022.123