INTERACTION DESIGN FOR OTHERS

In the realm of industrial design, it seems that we are inadequately care a very unique social segment; the ones with disabilities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s “2005 American Community Survey”, between the ages of 5 to 64, 19,4 percent of the society have at least one physical or mental disability.

Universal design initiative, which may be described as designing either for the impaired or full bodied members of the society, asks designers to perform for a maximum inclusion of all people. The distinction is that both the physical and mental disabilities vary from case to case. Thus, such an inclusive categorization works insufficiently and turns out to be some basic guiding principles of ergonomics.

Negroponte criticizes agent systems’ Orwellian nature but he projects the future computing systems as “…a collection of computer programs and personal appliances, each of which is pretty good at one thing and very good at communicating with the others.” Since the computers began to disappear and become embedded to literally anything, the domain of interaction design offers such intelligent systems which may work for the people with disabilities. According to Buurman, “Interactive systems exhibit the following characteristics; rule based, self-explanatory, intuitive, contextual, cooperative and oriented to surfaces, bodies or spaces.” Strong clues of such an aided future for disabled members of our global society exist both in the theory and practice of interaction design.

This paper tends to analyze contemporary attempts of designing for the disabled and tries to demonstrate a future projection in the domain of interaction design.

References:
U.S. Census Bureau. 2005 American Community Survey, Retrieved August 26, 2006, from American FactFinder
Buurman, Gerhard, Total Interaction, “Total Interaction: Interaction as a Guiding Principle beyond Aesthetics”, pp.57, Birkhauser, 2005
Negroponte, Nicholas, “Being Digital” pp.157, Vintage Books, New York, 1995