Maker culture in health care is on the rise with the rapid adoption of consumer-grade fabrication technologies. However, little is known about the activity and resources involved in prototyping medical devices to improve patient care. In this paper, we characterize medical making based on a qualitative study of medical stakeholder engagement in physical prototyping (making) experiences. We examine perspectives from diverse stakeholders including clinicians, engineers, administrators, and medical researchers. Through 18 semi-structured interviews with medical-makers in US and Canada, we analyze making activity in medical settings. We find that medical-makers share strategies to address risks, define labor roles, and acquire resources by adapting traditional structures or creating new infrastructures. Our findings outline how medical-makers mitigate risks for patient safety, collaborate with local and global stakeholder networks, and overcome constraints of co-location and material practices. We recommend a clinician-aided software system, partially-open repositories, and a collaborative skill-share social network to extend their strategies in support of medical making.
Design in the Public Square: Supporting Cooperative Assistive Technology Design Through Public Mixed-Ability Collaboration (CSCW 2019)
Mark. S. Baldwin, Sen H Hirano, Jennifer Mankoff, Gillian Hayes
From the white cane to the smartphone, technology has been an effective tool for broadening blind and low vision participation in a sighted world. In the face of this increased participation, individuals with visual impairments remain on the periphery of most sight-first activities. In this paper, we describe a multi-month public-facing co-design engagement with an organization that supports blind and low vision outrigger paddling. Using a mixed-ability design team, we developed an inexpensive cooperative outrigger paddling system, called DEVICE, that shares control between sighted and visually impaired paddlers. The results suggest that public design, a DIY (do-it-yourself) stance, and attentiveness to shared physical experiences, represent key strategies for creating assistive technologies that support shared experiences.
A close-up of version three of the CoOP system mounted to the rudder assembly and the transmitter used to control the rudder (right corner).The design evolution of the CoOP system in order of iteration from left to right.
Much of this quarter will likely be spent inventing and building accessibile technology, and you may not have time to also do the sort of participatory design project that would ideally ensure that your technology fully reflects your target user. This project is your opportunity to focus on learning rather than building, observing rather than inventing. Even if you already have a disability or have worked closely with people with disabilities before, you can always learn something new from going out into the field.
Up to 3 students at a time will attend a demo/ eval events involving assistive technology. I am still gathering details for this including timing and length.
During a device demonstration, students will have the opportunity to observe one of WATAP’s assistive technology specialists provide a guided exploration of the features and options of AT devices with the purpose of helping individuals with disabilities to make informed decisions and a confident choices about what AT would meet their functional needs. Evaluations are similar, but using information including the individual’s history, skills, decision and choice, environmental considerations, etc, the specialist will provide a written recommendation on what AT should be considered for purchase. You will have an opportunity to see the process of what information and considerations are used to make these recommendations.
At the end you should write a short reflection (about 1 page) about your experience. This reflection should touch on the following topics:
What did you observe (what stood out to you as interesting about the space, people, and task that you engaged with? Were there things that worked particularly well? Were there breakdowns?)
What did you learn (did you learn something about accessible technologies? Anything that might inform your approach to research?)
The grading rubric for this assignment is as follows. Please fill it out yourself, and ask a classmate to fill out and sign it. When points are 1 or 0, this is pass fail (no nuance). When points are 0-3, use the following scale: 0 – No answer to question; 1 – Short shallow answer to question; 2 – Good answer to question; 3 – Outstanding answer to question.
Yash is an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. While at make4all lab, Yash worked under the mentorship of Prof. Jennifer Mankoff and Dr. Anat Caspi on the Urban Mobility project. He was responsible of recruiting participants with a diverse range of abilities, conducting contextual interviews, survey monitoring, data collection and data analysis for majority of the pool of participants. His time at the make4all lab taught him to be inclusive of the different abilities of people while designing and developing technology. Yash will be interested in taking up projects in the future that aim to develop universally accessible technologies.
Learn how to communicate between an Arduino and your phone
Build a simple circuit that is enhanced by its connection to your phone
Basic Requirements for Project
Your project should demonstrate your ability to either:
Take input from at least one button (or other sensor), and connect it to some interesting service
Your focus should be on circuit design and Arduino programming. You don’t need to create a custom phone app. You can if you want create a custom case or button using 3d printing.
You should make a case for why this is an assistive technology of some sort. For example, you could build a door opening sensor (using a button or proximity sensor) that causes your phone to announce the door was opened, or a single switch control for scrolling or tabbing through a web page, or a capacitive sensor that captures a log of how often a cane is used.
There is some great software that con be connected to the Arduino including 1Shield, AppInventor, Blynk and IFTTT. Some work only for Android, others for both Android and iPhone.
There are lots of really great examples online of arduino based projects, arduino projects that involve smartphones, and arduino projects that involve 3D printing or laser cutting. Many of them are too complex for the expectations of this project, though they might help to inspire final projects, or give you ideas for something simple you can do in a week. Here is a sample:
Create a Thingiverse or Instructables page for your project with a brief description of the project, a video, any 3D printed files, and a schematic for your circuit. Turn the URL in by email with the subject: Project 2. Be prepared to demo your project in class.
Points
Description
1 or 0
Project uses physical computing to solve an accessibility problem
1 or 0
Project communicates with your phone in some way
1 or 0
Project includes a working circuit that you designed
1 or 0
Project includes at least one button
1 or 0
Project includes some kind of response to the button
1 or 0
Thingiverse or Instructables page describes project in a reproducable fashion.
How can physical computing enable new solutions to accessibility, including both access to the world and access to computers? Similarly, how can a disability studies perspective guide us in developing empowering and relevant solutions to accessibility problems? This course explores both of those questions through a combination of discussions, reading, and building.
Access technology (AT) has the potential to increase autonomy, and improve millions of people’s ability to live independently. This potential is currently under-realized because the expertise needed to create the right AT is in short supply and the custom nature of AT makes it difficult to deliver inexpensively. Yet computers’ flexibility and exponentially increasing power have revolutionized and democratized access technologies. In addition, by studying access technology, we can gain valuable insights into the future of all user interface technology.
In this course we will focus on two primary domains for access technologies: Access to the world (first half of the class) and Access to computers (second half of class). Students will start the course by learning some basic physical computing capabilities so that they have the tools to build novel access technologies. We will focus on creating AT using sensors and actuators that can be controlled/sensed with a mobile device. The largest project in the class will be an open ended opportunity to explore access technology in more depth.
Assistive Technologies for Students with Visual Impairments and Blindness (On Canvas). Really interesting contrast to the other; but long — skim it, and focus on learning about at least 5 assistive technologies you weren’t familiar with before (starts on p. 11 of the pdf and goes until p. 31) p. 33 is also worth reading.
Week 8 (11/13 ONLY): Applications
Discuss some application areas for accessible technology
Exercise & Recreation
Navigation & Maps
Programming and Computation
Home/IoT control
Reflection on role of User Research in Successful AT
Reading 2: Exploring Aesthetic Enhancement of Wearable Technologies for Deaf Women .
Week 9 (11/18; 11/20): The Web
Learn about “The Web,” how access technologies interact with the Web, and how to make accessible web pages.
WebAim.org — WebAIM has long been a leader in providing information and tutorials on making the Web accessible. A great source where you can read about accessibility issues, making content accessible, etc. Run it on your website or web page and look at the results before class.
Reading 1: Google Video on Practical Web Accessibility — this video provides a great overview of the Web and how to make web content accessible. Highly recommended as a supplement to what we will cover in class.
Optional Reading: If you want to supplement the reading with written guidance, check out WebAim.org Introduction to Web Accessibility, specifically the section titled ‘Principles of Accessible Design’ (which has links to how to properly write alt text; appropriate document structure, and so on).
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19)
People eat every day and biting is one of the most fundamental and natural actions that they perform on a daily basis. Existing work has explored tooth click location and jaw movement as input techniques, however clenching has the potential to add control to this input channel. We propose clench interaction that leverages clenching as an actively controlled physiological signal that can facilitate interactions. We conducted a user study to investigate users’ ability to control their clench force. We found that users can easily discriminate three force levels, and that they can quickly confirm actions by unclenching (quick release). We developed a design space for clench interaction based on the results and investigated the usability of the clench interface. Participants preferred the clench over baselines and indicated a willingness to use clench-based interactions. This novel technique can provide an additional input method in cases where users’ eyes or hands are busy, augment immersive experiences such as virtual/augmented reality, and assist individuals with disabilities.
Jasper Tran O’Leary, Sara Zewde, Jennifer Mankoff , Daniela K. Rosner
CHI 2019
This paper draws on a collaborative project called the Africatown Activation to examine the role design practices play in contributing to (or conspiring against) the flourishing of the Black community in Seattle, Washington. Specifically, we describe the efforts of a community group called Africatown to design and build an installation that counters decades of disinvestment and ongoing displacement in the historically Black Central Area neighborhood. Our analysis suggests that despite efforts to include community, conventional design practices may perpetuate forms of institutional racism: enabling activities of community engagement that may further legitimate racialized forms of displacement. We discuss how focusing on amplifying the legacies of imagination already at work may help us move beyond a simple reading of design as the solution to systemic forms of oppression.
Consumer-fabrication technologies potentially improve the effectiveness and adoption of assistive technology (AT) by engaging AT users in AT creation. However, little is known about the role of clinicians in this revolution. We investigate clinical AT fabrication by working as expert fabricators for clinicians over a four-month period. We observed and co-designed AT with four occupational therapists at two clinics: a free clinic for uninsured clients, and a Veteran’s Affairs Hospital. We find that existing fabrication processes, particularly with respect to rapid prototyping, do not align with clinical practice and its \textit{do-no-harm} ethos. We recommend software solutions that would integrate into client care by: amplifying clinicians’ expertise, revealing appropriate fabrication opportunities, and supporting adaptable fabrication.
This course was originally an introduction to accessibility centered on web in particular for graduate and undergraduate student. Jeff Bigham and I co-created it and he has since expanded it and taught it multiple times. The current iteration can be found at: http://www.accessibilitycourse.com/
Jeff Bigham’s new framing is wonderful inspiration for future accessibility courses. To quote his website:
Access technologists are the ultimate interface hackers. They take existing technology and make it work for people and situations for which it wasn’t designed — they transform visual interfaces into landscapes of sound and touch, they overlay interfaces that people with low dexterity can use on top of interfaces requiring fine motor control, and they turn speech and sound into visual displays. This course teaches how access technology is built to work within the tough technical and human constraints in which it must operate. As early adopters, people with disabilities have inspired a host of future user interface technologies, e.g., conversational assistants, text-to-speech, speech recognition, optical character recognition, predictive typing, tactile displays, etc. People with disabilities continue to be the first users of interface next-generation technologies that are gradually adopted widely. This course will not only teach you the deep inner workings of today’s user interface technology, but will also serve as a guide for building the user interfaces of the future.
“Occupational Therapy is Making'”: Design Iteration and Digital Fabrication in Occupational Therapy