Presentation Summaries - Short Presentations

Human-Centered and Universal Design

Cindy Bennett presenting on Accessible Design.

Students’ Understanding of Human-Centered Design

Presenter: Carla Zoltowski

In our research, we were interested in looking at ways in which students experience and understand human-centered design. We wanted to understand how educators can help students develop an understanding of, and the skills needed for, human-centered design. We also wished to learn which experiences contribute most to students’ learning of human-centered design and development of an understanding of the user.

Using a phenomenological approach, our study interviewed students over 18 who have participated in design experiences where they are “designing for others.” This included curricular projects such as design classes as well as co-curricular activities such as Engineers Without Borders, research, internships, and other experiences.

Analysis of the interviews led to qualitatively different ways that students understood human-centered design. Five of these categories were hierarchical and included human-centered design as “user as information source input to linear process,” “keep users’ needs in mind,” “design in context,” “commitment,” and “empathic design.” There were two other categories with design viewed as “service” or “technology-centered.”

These results suggest a number of things:

  • Both design and “understanding of the users” reflected in experiences.
  • Development of both an understanding of design and of the need to understand the users are related.
  • Both are needed in the development of a more comprehensive way of understanding human-centered design.

For more information, consult Zoltowski, C., Oakes, W., & Cardella, M. (2012). ‘Students’ Ways of Experiencing Human-Centered Design. Journal of Engineering Education, 101(1).


Mentoring Engineering Students to Consider the Needs of Individuals who are Blind or Visually Impaired

Presenter: Cris Schwartz

There is a substantial “opportunity cost” to our economy based on the fact that a large segment of our population has a disability, which impedes their ability to fully contribute their talents and aptitudes to our overall societal productivity. One major area where this cost is realized is in the challenges faced by blind and visually impaired (BVI) persons who have interests in studying and/or working in STEM fields. Because of the traditional reliance of STEM disciplines on visual information representation, the prospect of a STEM profession can often seem insurmountable by BVI students. The challenges in transcribing graphical information to a tactual format translates into large number of barriers to BVI students interested in STEM. From another perspective, sighted engineering students often are not aware of how this segment of society is unable to use the products of their design efforts due to accessibility obstacles. Even at the capstone design level, many engineering students have a difficult time incorporating accessibility considerations into their designing.

Efforts directed at addressing both pre-college BVI students, as well as university engineering students, has resulted in the development of the immersive engineering and design course ProblemBusters!, which is taught biennially at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The course is a one-week summer enrichment course that engages middle and high-school BVI students in hands-on exploration of the engineering design process, team-based problem solving, mechanical and electrical engineering topics, assistive technology, and the practice of self-advocacy to request needed accommodations. Each offering of the course focuses on an overarching design theme and culminates in a product roll-out show to parents and the public on the last day of the class. A recent theme was the design and fabrication of engineered paper for use in a solar sail for an interplanetary spacecraft. Additionally, these students have also indicated unmet accessibility needs and proposed conceptual solutions. One particular concept was developed into a capstone design project for senior-level engineering students, which resulted in a working prototype that could scan book pages and convert graphics and text to a tactile display in such a way that text is recognized and converted to braille in near real-time.

ProblemBusters!, as well as continued work with university engineering students involving accessible design, has resulted in a meaningful two-way learning opportunity for both groups. It is anticipated that these experiences will help BVI students who are interested in STEM fields realize that when they get to college, they can be fully engaged in team-based projects alongside their sighted peers. Learn more about ProblemBusters!.


EPICS: A Service-Learning Design Program

Presenter: Andrew Pierce

EPICS is a service-learning design program in which teams of students partner with local and global community organizations to address human, community, and environmental needs. Founded at Purdue University in 1995, EPICS integrates multidisciplinary, vertically-integrated, and student-led real design projects into the curriculum. Over the past twenty years, EPICS at Purdue has grown to over 500 students each semester. In addition, EPICS has expanded to more than 25 universities and over 100 K-12 schools. In EPICS, students apply material they are learning in other courses to enrich their design experience, while developing the broad set of technical and professional skills needed in today’s global economy—including teamwork, leadership, project management, and communication skills. The innovative curricular structure of EPICS allows students to participate for multiple semesters, which in turn provides support for long-term relationships with community partners. The Purdue EPICS projects are categorized into four areas of impact: access and abilities, education, environmental, and human services. These project teams employ a human-centered design approach to collaborate with their community partners in designing and building solutions to the challenges posed by their project partners and end users.

Some examples of the Purdue EPICS teams that are working in the area of access and abilities include the Indiana Schools for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI), Assistive Technology (AT), Camp Riley (CR), Global Design of Assistive Technology (GDAT), Mobility (MOBI), and Greater Lafayette Area Special Services (GLASS) teams. The ISBVI team is developing technology to assist sighted teachers in communicating with their blind students and constructing a magnifier to make a portable option for students with low vision. The AT team is evolving daily-living assistive technology for a three year old boy with Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita (AMC) and a mechanical horse to help transition children into hippotherapy with a living horse. The CR team has partnered with a camp for children with disabilities and is creating a sip-and-puff switch controlled sailboat rudder to make the camp’s water activities more inclusive. The GDAT team is in the early stages of writing an auditory-based navigation app to assist blind individuals with public transportation in Dublin, Ireland. The MOBI team has created a multi-line refreshable Braille e-reader and a prosthetic lower limb to help a young boy play baseball. The GLASS team has partnered with the local special education organization and is developing a ball-toss game with children with Cerebral Palsy and has created a suite of apps to assist students with learning disabilities in communication and education. Projects like these have benefitted tremendously from close working partnerships between the student teams, the community partner organizations, and the end users.

Learn more about EPICS.


Accessible Makerspaces

Presenters: Katherine Steele and Maya Cakmak

Since a conversation at our spring 2015 CBI, AccessEngineering has been working to improve the accessibility of makerspaces. There are two reasons to focus on this issue: (1) many universities are building makerspaces, which allows us to to proactively address accessibility rather that retrofitting existing facilities and (2) the maker movement is interested in increasing access to making for all, which can make for a welcoming environment for people with disabilities. We have developed a list of recommendations based on (1) conversations during the previous CBI, (2) a tour of UW’s CoMotion makerspace and design challenge conducted with students with disabilities, and (3) feedback from a variety of stakeholders.

Lessons learned include the following:

  • Flexible furniture and outlets can improve the accessibility of the space.
  • Keeping key equipment in fixed locations can aid individuals with visual impairments.
  • Magnifying lenses and desk lamps are useful tools to assist with vision.
  • Quiet spaces where individuals can work or groups can meet can help individuals with attention deficits or those who are deaf of hard of hearing.
  • Training materials and orientations need to be accessible.

More recommendations are available online.


Accessible Design Challenges

Presenters: Cynthia Bennett and Andrew Davidson

Through this activity, we explored how to ideate accessibly since some methods that we teach students may not be accessible for everyone. Often, students are taught to sketch when they ideate or brainstorm. Students are also taught to brainstorm in groups, iterating on ideas, and a time constraint is often put in place to help students to get their ideas out without developing them too far.

We facilitated an hour and a half design activity where participants first brainstormed about a design challenge, reflected on access barriers encountered during that experience, and brainstormed solutions to these barriers. Teams had at least one participant with a disability who was willing to talk about their disability during the design activity.

First, participants were introduced to the user-centered design process—needs assessments, ideation, prototyping, and usability testing. We then defined ideation in more detail as we spent the remainder of the activity focusing on it. Teams participated in a design challenge to think about making smart classrooms more accessible. Following ideation on the design challenge, teams were asked to identify an access barrier they encountered during phase 1 and to ideate solutions to ease or eliminate it.

Teams identified many access barriers and potential solutions that could be helpful for ideation or other group activities. They included the following:

  • Allowing each group member to identify their learning styles and needs before the activity.
  • Using methods for people to use various devices such as syncing handwriting and electronic text, and including provisions for telepresence.
  • Engaging ways of communicating so one person speaks at once and everyone gets to speak such as passing around something for the speaker to hold.
  • A method for facilitators to let participants know they are moving on without interrupting groups.
  • Scaffolding activity steps including expectations of what should be done at the end of the step to ensure everyone is on the same page.
  • Putting less emphasis on time constraints or other ways of getting students to share whatever idea comes to mind without consideration for feasibility.
  • Organizing ideation so people can follow the progression of ideation such as placing sticky notes in a pattern rather than tossing them onto the table as soon as an idea is written down.
  • Using high contrast and 3-D materials.

Outreach & Community Involvement

Jonathan Lazar presents on Building a Cross-Campus Coalition Related to Disability.

Providing Opportunities for K-12 Students with Disabilities to Engage in Engineering Activities

Presenter: Leyf Starling

In order to provide K-12 students with multiple opportunities to engage in engineering activities, we must have a common understanding of what engineering activities are and how we can adapt or modify them to make them accessible to all students. Additionally, we need a strategy for teaming with teachers to implement these activities as well as designing unique opportunities to students with disabilities to explore the world of engineering both inside and outside the classroom. This presentation provided a common definition for engineering in the K-12 world and what an engineering activity is as well as suggests promising practices on providing teacher professional development on how to incorporate engineering in the classroom and how to design experiences for students with disabilities to engage in engineering outside of the classroom.


Managing an Open Prototyping Facility

Presenter: Davin Huston, Purdue University

The BoilerMAKER Lab at Purdue University (boilermakerlabs.org/) is a small prototyping facility with a high volume of projects (1300+ 3D print jobs every semester) and over 400 users. It is open to all Purdue students, faculty, and staff. It includesa variety of equipment, including a full woodshop with CNC routers, a laser cutter, metal mill, and hand tools; a printed circuit board mill; and a variety of 3-D printers.

Our client comes first. We adapt to our users when they present the need. When students need design assistance, we will help them face-to-face. We have a large group of volunteers to assist (who are given free printing) and three paid undergraduates who are trained on the repair, management, and safety of the large machine tools. We try to make all of the machines accessible to everyone. Lab monitors are trained on machine use and will help teach others. There’s an online queue system for all 3-D print jobs. There are no machine fees and students are given a small amount of materials for free each week.

Current research endeavors include an improved queue system, automated part removal for 3-D printing, automated material loading, prosthetics, curriculum for P-12 / higher education, and an accessible pinball machine.

Tips for Success

  • Don’t lock the door! If the door is shut, it can create the perception of a barrier to access.
  • Always listen to your client. It is actually more their facility than yours.
  • Students on a creativity binge can make odd choices and demands. Cope with it, learn from it, encourage the creativity! Help educate and use it as a learning moment on good project design and manufacturing choices.
  • As long as the client is being safe, allow mistakes to happen.
  • Provide a way for all volunteers and employees to showcase their efforts through online portfolios, photos, posters, or display cases.

Setup a group messaging system so that all questions between volunteers, employees, and supervisors are visible to all.


Building a Cross-Campus Coalition Related to Disability

Presenter: Jonathan Lazar 

The Special Interest Group on Educational Accessibility serves the Towson University community as a hub for resources related to courses, programs, research, and events for people who benefit from cognitive, motor, communicative, or perceptual alternatives to support their participation in aspects of campus and community life. It is a collaborative project that brings together faculty and staff from all over the university who are interested in issues related to disability and accessibility to discuss, organize, and disseminate information.

 

Disability-Related Issues in the Classroom

Arash Esmaili Zaghi presents on Creative Potential and Challenges of Students with ADHD in Engineering Programs

Preparing Individuals with Disabilities for Education and Work

Presenter: Randy Williams

The Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL) at the University of Pittsburgh takes great pride in our work with veterans. Our efforts are aimed at improving every aspect of their lives and the lives of their families—whether it is a program to assist with the transition from the military to enrollment in STEM-related fields of study, or research that will improve their level of satisfaction and participation in everyday life activities. To achieve these objectives, the HERL has established partnerships with local, state, and national non-profit organizations, along with colleges and universities across the country, in order to provide high-quality programs aimed at easing veterans’ transition to academic and career opportunities.

Specifically, the HERL has three offerings that are veteran-centered:

  • Experiential Learning for Veterans in Assistive Technology and Engineering (ELeVATE), a 10-week program designed to assist wounded and injured veterans with the transition into a STEM college or university program via college preparation, professional development, and social activities.
  • Advancing Inclusive Manufacturing (AIM), a 12-week program for veterans interested in machining and assistive technology and rewards a basics of assistive technology fabrication certificate.
  • Research Experience for Veterans and Teachers (REV-T), an 8-week program that pairs veterans and high school teachers to work with individuals with disabilities to design assistive technology.

The HERL, in partnership with the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC), and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), produces the State of the Science Symposia Series. These quarterly symposia address a wide array of subjects related to the care, medical rehabilitation, and well being of veterans.

Sports, and disabled veterans’ ability to participate in them, have long been a focus of the HERL. The Sport Participation Outcomes Research Tool and Comprehensive Uniform Survey (SPORTACUS) was developed by the HERL and provided empirical data that correlates sports and recreation as important elements of successful rehabilitation programs for people with disabilities. In addition, the HERL has developed multiple pieces of sports equipment, including the Racing SmartWheel for wheelchair racers and a throwing chair for use in in field events.

The HERL is proud to work with the following partners in improving the lives of disabled veterans:

  • University of Pittsburgh
  • Veterans Administration
  • University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
  • National Science Foundation
  • Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation
  • Disabled Veterans National Foundation
  • FISA Foundation
  • Operation StrongVet/Western PA
  • Paralyzed Veterans of America

Lessons Learned from Teaching about Assistive Technology

Presenter: Jeff Dusek

This talk summarized the lessons learned while serving as a project mentor and course co-instructor for the MIT class Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology (PPAT). The goal of PPAT is for student teams to work collaboratively with a person with a disability from the community to develop customized assistive devices.

  • Collaboratively: The client is a vital member of the design team
  • Community: Foster social engagement and connect students with the broader assistive technology community
  • Customized: Allow teams to develop innovative solutions free from the confines of insurance, etc.

PPAT is a project-based course. The range of projects covers a wide swath of engineering disciplines including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science. To accommodate the wide range of disabilities and project types addressed by the course, a huge range of technical expertise is required from the course staff. This leads to lesson one: it takes a village. To run PPAT successfully the course staff includes several project mentors from MIT and local universities that bring their expertise in areas such as eye tracking and language processing to the course. Similarly, the class partners with community organizations to find projects and provide additional resources and expertise to the students.

After taking the course myself in 2013 I realized that it is particularly important to focus on lesson two: prototype early, iterate often, and fail quickly. Because the course focuses on individual design, the importance of gathering feedback from clients (our expert users) on prototypes of increasing fidelity cannot be overstated. Also, it is often the simple solution that is the most likely to be useful in the real world, a fact that is often ignored by MIT students!

Having been involved in PPAT for three years now, it has become very clear that students value challenging and socially relevant problems. The level of student engagement in PPAT has been excellent, and we have received very positive feedback each year at the conclusion of the course. With that said, I also needed to learn that not every project is right for the class. In general, I have found projects where students can interact directly with an engaged and invested client are best, and that institutional clients introduce bureaucratic challenges to the project that are often best avoided.

The curriculum for PPAT is in a continual state of development, and this year I was reminded aesthetics matter through a fantastic lecture on aesthetics in assistive technology, and that in the right setting it can be ok to ask the awkward questions through a very open and enlightening panel discussion on “uncomfortable questions” with community members with disabilities who volunteered their time and perspectives.

Assigning relevant deliverables was a key component of the course. A final documentary style video achieved the goal of chronicling projects while teaching the students effective use of the video medium—a highly desirable skill in many situations.

Learn more online at the class website.


Examples of Student Projects related to Disability

Presenter: Dave Chesney

There is a common saying that “The devil is in the details.” This is often particularly true when building accessibility into hardware and software. In several class projects focused on assistive technology, the details meant the difference between success and failure and provided students with a true understanding of universal design and ‘subtlety’ when building user interfaces. Individual Design is the design of a product or environment to be usable by one person based upon her/his specific needs. Often, the understanding of an individual design can lead to a better understanding of universal design.

A case study of a young girl with cerebral palsy was discussed. Students in the presenter’s course worked directly with this young lady over an academic year. Very unique characteristics of her interaction with tablets and computers enabled the students to gain clarity related to human-computer interfaces. As an example, the touch interface of a tablet worked best when it reacted to her ‘release’ rather than initial contact.

Insight such as this informs the development of a tablet interface that might be user-specified as either touch-enabled or release-enabled. Thus, universal design of a tablet interface is informed by the individual design for this young lady.


Creative Potential and Challenges of Students with ADHD in Engineering Programs

Presenter: Arash Esmaili Zaghi

This presentation considered the preliminary findings of two NSF-funded projects focusing on engineering student with attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder (ADHD):

  1. Research Initiation Grants: Nurturing the Creativity of Students with ADHD in Engineering Disciplines
  2. REU Site: Research Experience in Cyber and Civil Infrastructure Security for Students with ADHD: Fostering Innovation

This work was motivated by my own experiences with ADHD as well as research that suggests that individuals with ADHD have strengths in divergent thinking and risk taking.  It is important to consider this since students with ADHD are less likely to study engineering than other fields and because they are more likely to drop out of college.

Preliminary research results indicate these:

  • There is a statistically significant association between creative potential and ADHD characteristics.
  • There is a significant difference between academic performance in students with strong and weak ADHD characteristics.
  • We suggest that the lack of attention of students in classes is associated the way engineering material are presented in lecture-based passive classes.
  • The adverse impact of the impairment of memory on academic performance is an indication that the current engineering curriculum heavily relies on memorization of subjects.
  • Unfortunately, our traditional engineering education system puts the blame on students with ADHD for not being attentive in classes.

2015 was the first year of our REU and it will happen again in 2016. Students are surveyed to consider how the REU impacts the likelihood they’ll remain in their engineering program, their interest in graduate school, self-confidence, and ability to see themselves as an inventor.

Read more about these ideas in Zaghi, A. E., Reis, S. M., Renzulli, J. S., & Kaufman, J. C. (2016). Unique potential and challenges of students with ADHD in engineering programs. Proceedings from the ASEE’s 123rd Annual Conference and Exposition. asee.org/public/conferences/64/papers/17281/view


AT Hackathons

Presenter: William Li

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we have organized an annual assistive technology hackathon, called AT Hack, each year since 2014. In the hackathon, teams of three to four students work with a person with a disability to develop customized assistive technologies.

A hackathon is an opportunity for people to come together to engage in creative problem solving. In an assistive technology hackathon, the focus is on projects that target technologies improving access and independence for people with disabilities. In each of 2015 and 2016, there were approximately 85 students who worked with 15-20 assistive technology users. The hackathon was a powerful way to introduce a large number of students to disability, accessibility, and assistive technology.

The MIT AT Hack has used the following format: a dinner for project matching, then a full-day hackathon about two weeks later. In the two-week period in between the hackathon, many teams brainstormed ideas, ordered materials, and communicated with their target AT user about ideas.

The hackathon takes place in a makerspace on campus. It includes software, electronics, hardware, and mechanical design projects—the makerspace has a machine shop, electronics equipment (soldering irons, oscilloscopes, etc.), hand tools, and space for putting together projects. Depending on the space and equipment availability, it is possible to run hackathons without some of these other categories of projects, such as one with only software.

Examples of projects from this year include the following:

  • A speech-to-text real-time captioning system using IBM Watson’s speech recognition engine
  • An iPhone app designed for a blind user to detect light sources in a room
  • A lift for a person to get from the floor into a wheelchair
  • A ball-joint-based attachment for a white cane on a wheelchair for an assistive technology user with multiple disabilities

The ingredients of a successful AT hackathon include assistive technology users, students/makers, volunteers and organizers, sponsors/money for food and materials, and space. In particular, the MIT hackathon has been successful involving assistive technology users and people with disabilities as participants, designers, engineers, and organizers.

An assistive technology hackathon differs from many other hackathons. It involves end users (people with disabilities) as testers, judges, or sources of ideas. It also doesn’t always include prizes, but instead focuses the prize on helping the community or coming together. Sometimes the prize is continued funding for a particular project.

For more information visit MIT Assistive Technology Hackathon.