Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

How design for disabled people and mainstream design could inspire, provoke, and radically change each other.

Eyeglasses have been transformed from medical necessity to fashion accessory. This revolution has come about through embracing the design culture of the fashion industry. Why shouldn't design sensibilities also be applied to hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, and communication aids? In return, disability can provoke radical new directions in mainstream design. Charles and Ray Eames's iconic furniture was inspired by a molded plywood leg splint that they designed for injured and disabled servicemen. Designers today could be similarly inspired by disability.

In Design Meets Disability , Graham Pullin shows us how design and disability can inspire each other. In the Eameses' work there was a healthy tension between cut-to-the-chase problem solving and more playful explorations. Pullin offers examples of how design can meet disability today. Why, he asks, shouldn't hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear? What new forms of braille signage might proliferate if designers kept both sighted and visually impaired people in mind? Can simple designs avoid the need for complicated accessibility features? Can such emerging design methods as "experience prototyping" and "critical design" complement clinical trials?

Pullin also presents a series of interviews with leading designers about specific disability design projects, including stepstools for people with restricted growth, prosthetic legs (and whether they can be both honest and beautifully designed), and text-to-speech technology with tone of voice. When design meets disability, the diversity of complementary, even contradictory, approaches can enrich each field.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Pullin (Univ. of Dundee) argues for the importance of including industrial designers on multidisciplinary teams that are developing new products for the disabled. In Pullin's view, designers and engineers have divergent values and methods, and frequently engineers control the design process, often producing mundane and mechanistic solutions. Putting the two on equal footing could cause "healthy tensions"--disagreements that could enrich the perspectives of both. Designers have experience in the dynamic consumer market, and insight that stimulates experimentation and the development of visually arresting and fashionable products. Innovative designers, he notes, have transformed glasses from shunned therapeutic aids to fashionable accessories; this transformation could change public perceptions of other products, such as hearing aids. Pullin's discussion of the impact of the universal design and critical design movements on design for the disabled meanders somewhat but still provides provocative perspectives. Ultimately, Pullin presents multiple strategies for blurring distinctions between design for the disabled and nondisabled--ideas he believes could help change social attitudes toward disability. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and professionals in all areas of design. A. R. Michelson University of Washington Libraries