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September + October 2010

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

User Experience Researcher/Designer

interactions
Pacific Northwest National Lab
seeks candidates to research and
develop next generation interface
and interaction designs for visual
information analysis. Must be able
to obtain a security clearance.

Disability, he gives us an inspiring book about disability that talks to the art school-trained designer. The book has two parts. In the first, he contemplates what it would be like if designers rather than engineers designed hearing aids, limb prostheses, and wheelchairs. Or rather, what it would be like if an interdisciplinary team of designers and engineers developed designs for disabilities that took into account context and experience.

To frame the discussion, Pullin looks at the tension between sets of design principles. From the opening pages, the tension between discretion and fashion is introduced as a short and welcome history lesson on the design and engineering of medical devices. The classic approach has been to try to make the disability invisible, a thing that has never been done particularly well. The materials aren’t right, the assumptions aren’t right, and the technology isn’t good enough. But what if design could be used to des-tigmatize disability, as in the case of eyeglasses?

Pullin also contemplates the tension between universal design and simplicity. Making a device that will work for nearly everyone often means adding complexity by layering on affordances for differently abled people. Not only is there a visual layer, but also a tactile layer and an auditory layer, which is a direct conflict with the principle of simplicity in design: taking things away until only what is needed is present. Pullin closes this topic by giving examples of designs that did strip away nearly every feature that might be considered helpful to universal design, but in doing so actually delivered the best possible experience for the widest audience.

In his discussion of ability and identity, Pullin presents the World Health Organization’s definitions of disability, which are broad and assertive. WHO states every person will experience disability at some point, recognizing, as Pullin says, “disability as a complex interaction between the features of a person’s body and the features of the environment and society in which the person lives.” Adding context to the picture of disability stretches the design possibilities and removes limitations, disabilities, and handicaps from the medical realm and inserts them into the everyday lives of us all. The discussion no longer centers on a binary classification of disabled versus able.