INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION
A hallmark of the Occupational Therapy Program is the partnerships students have with the University's design programs. Occupational Therapy students team up with undergraduate students in design and textile majors to design adapted solutions for clients with disabilities.
Occupational therapy students gain invaluable experience by consulting and collaborating with their peers in design programs, as they learn to view their client's challenges armed with a unique perspective and expanded knowledge base.
Industrial Design Project
For
people with disabilities, adaptive tools help them to lives their daily lives
to their fullest. Students from the Industrial Design and Occupational Therapy
programs join talents in a semester-long project to research and develop
adaptive devices.
Some of the devices created include:
- Remote grabbing units to assist those who depend on a wheelchair or who may have diminished muscle strength
- Adapted car-entry system utilizing a light weight leg lift for a person who has poor balance and low energy due to Multiple Sclerosis
- A custom-designed vacuum cleaner for a person who
uses crutches
Interior Design Project
 Because
of the unique holistic perspective and task analysis skills of the occupational
therapist, they are often called upon to consult in accessible design of homes,
business, and public structures. To prepare for and expose occupational therapists
to this role, the Interior Design and Occupational Therapy students collaborate
to design an accessible physician's office based on a specific group of patients
that might use the office.
Teams comprised of both Interior Design and Occupational
Therapy students were assigned a group of users with specific conditions for
which they needed to design the physician's office. The user groups ranged
from children to older adults with mobility, vision, and cognitive impairments.
The role of the occupational therapy student in this
poject was to provide:
- Information as to the conditions/diagnoses for which
Design students were targeting.
- Experiential activities for the Interior Design students.
- Task analyses of activities that someone with a disability
would typically need to perform in the physician's office.
- Specific architectural and design considerations to
facilitate occupational competence for the target user group.
Graphic Design
 Occupational
therapy and Graphic Design students work hand-in-hand on a design project
that takes words relating to disability and frames them in a new way - in
a way that advocates for positive aspirations and perceptions. Some of the
words students have represented during the past 4 years include:
-
Mobility
-
Motivation
-
Assistance
-
Hope
-
Grasp
-
Adaptation
-
Integration
-
Partnership
-
Empathy
Students in both courses meet to brainstorm ideas and come up with words
to use in the final designs. With insight gleaned from the occupational therapy
students' insights into disability and occupation, graphic design students
create designs to communicate effectively, to express the meaning of the word,
to create visual interest and to sensitize the viewer to the meanings.
Fashion Apparel Project
As
a component of the 4th semester course, Interpersonal Relations & Dynamics
of Collaboration, occupational therapy students join apparel management students.
In this project, students collaborate to design a new line of clothing targeting
7-year old girls with disabilities typically associated with cerebral palsy.
Working face-to-face and via the Internet, teams
conduct an environmental scan to evaluate environmental, physical, and psychosocial
implications of caregivers and young girls. The teams subsequently design
garments that meet the needs of this market. The occupational therapy students
then followed up by evaluating the effectiveness of the end product in meeting
client needs.
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