Can design documentaries disrupt design for disability?

Abstract

This paper shows how design documentaries can motivate new perspectives for design and disability. We critically consider the ways in which design documentaries can foreground children's lived experiences and priorities, in cases where it is not always possible to involve children early on in the design process. By presenting a design case for supporting communication that involves children with severe speech and physical impairments and their social peers, we discuss how this narrative method can evoke designer empathy and guide new interpretations. Our findings show that design documentaries can convey to designers rich and multifaceted accounts of children's communication experiences. Although this is found to be generative, we also identify a tension with a bodily impairment understanding of disability. Drawing on reflections from our case study, we propose new methodological implications for embedding design documentaries in the design process of technologies for disability.

Making Public Involvement in Research More Inclusive of People With Complex Speech and Motor Disorders: The I-ASC Project

“…In addition, we have reported important novel findings about the practicalities, challenges, and benefits of involving people with complex speech and motor disorders who use AAC and their family members in research. Although this group is increasingly involved in the development of assistive technology and AAC devices using participatory design methodologies ( Hamidi et al, 2015 ; Ibrahim et al, 2020 ), their involvement in research is less common ( Moulam et al, 2020 ). While some individuals who use AAC are known to be lead or co-investigators in both AAC and other research fields, there is little research evaluating their experience as co-investigators or specifically focused on any barriers and facilitators to their involvement and how this affects project outcomes.…”

A methodological reflection on investigating children’s voice in qualitative research involving children with severe speech and physical impairments

“…2. Representing a child-centred account of communication by creating an example design documentary; which is a video story that conveys to designers detailed instances from children's lives with the intention of motivating design (see Ibrahim, Vasalou, and Clarke 2020). 3.…”

“…with a linguistically oriented focus for alleviating bodily impairment. In support of this, in our prior work we identified that the majority of technology solutions for supporting communication have been informed by a restricted set of design perspectives, including the dominant, normative view that technologies alleviate bodily impairment (Ibrahim, Vasalou, and Clarke 2020).…”