Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

A Participatory Design Framework For Customisable Assistive Technology, Pearl O'Rourke

Doctoral

High product costs and device abandonment negatively affect people with disabilities who require Assistive Technology (AT), and poor product design is a root cause. The purpose of this research is to develop and demonstrate a participatory design framework for customisable AT, which addresses the need for low-cost assistive products that satisfy a broad range of consumers’ needs. This framework addresses two main gaps in the literature. First, user involvement in the design process of medical and rehabilitative products helps create products that are more effective but, although methods to involve users exist, there are currently scant techniques to translate the …