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 design programs join talents in a semester-long project to research and develop adaptive devices for people with physical and other disabilities.

Some of the devices created include:

• Remote grabbing units to assist those who may be confined to a wheelchair or who may have diminished muscle strength
• A wallet that helps a young boy with Down's syndrome count and display his money
• 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.

• 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.

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.

See examples of the projects by clicking on each icon below: