Empowerment of people of all abilities
For my master thesis, I sought ways to redefine disability, by focusing on people with lower limb amputations. I focused on the most troublesome part of their daily interaction with a prosthesis, which is the socket. Socket is an interface between the body and the prosthetic. It is how they connect.
Overview
I began to understand the challenges and opportunities to facilitate empowerment. I divided my actions into four types of empowerment: control of the action, acceptance of one’s current state, elimination of social biases, and access to resources.
Design
I address these four areas of empowerment through the design of a system of support that contains important resources and a care tool-kit. The kit is embedded with tools for healing rituals that help an individual gain acceptance when dealing with grief. In the Declaration I communicate that disability happens between human and environment — which can be physical or social. In addition it is necessary to initiate social change by promoting a new outlook in society as we all have various abilities and we all are #variable. Empowerment of people of all abilities is focusing on embracing atypical strengths and to alter the perception of disability. The goal is to promote accessibility and design for people of all abilities. Good design should take into account diverse audiences. If you design for those for whom the activity is difficult and make it easy, you design well for everyone.
Current transition
Transition with proactive system
Tool kit
Despite having three dimensional form; toolkit unzips to a flat mat that contain organized tools in a functional order, provides a working surface, and encourages keeping a self-report journal, which can either be a notebook, voice recording or Empeer app platform entry. Tools are designed to serve the purpose of building a better relationship with their own body. A towel in the form of a mitten adds a layer of intimacy into drying the residual limb along with providing a safe and easy tool to desensitize post amputation wounds. The form of the kit, intentionally does not resembles medical equipment, to avoid looking stigmatizing.
Empeer low-fi iPad prototype
Possible use of a Empeer app on low-fi iPad prototype
I looked at the physical and psychological experience with the socket. During general research I explored disability, prosthetics, body image, mobility, empowerment, trauma, grief, acceptance, self-help, biases, and identity. I learned that after an amputation surgery, people experience a grief that is comparable to the loss of a loved one. Historically, some people deal with grief by creating and performing rituals. That helped me defined the design opportunity and move to targeted research. I focused on learning more about healing rituals, disability definition, empowerment, grieving process, care for residual limb, and behaviour change.
Research methods
Secondary research
Contextual interviews
Phone interviews
Observation
Co-creation
Experiments to understand emotions and subconscious beliefs
I talked with several people with amputations, as well as physicians, prosthetists, and peer visitors from amputee support groups.