Design Meets Disability

by Graham Pullin

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.

Genres: Design, Disability, Nonfiction, Art Design, Art, School

363 pages, Paperback

First published April 24, 2009

Reviews

[Ramachandra Kishore · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book inspires readers with examples of collaboration between designers and engineers for designing products of disability. The author introduces the tensions which are common in this domain like fashion vs discretion, feeling vs testing and simple to universal. Engineers and Bio-medical professionals approach the design for disability like a typical engineer problem and focus on solving rather than exploration like a any other design project. The book has some interesting examples of the products which question a lot of assumptions and provides a great insight into the domain of design for disability.

[Ryan Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book looking at social models of disability and exploring everything from stigma to assistive technology as fashion. This was a pivotal book for me and massively influenced my perspective on design for disability as a designer and researcher

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, it's hard for me to evaluate this book since I am neither a designer nor a person with disabilities. What I can say is that it presents a fresh, punky attitude towards disabilities and assistive technologies, arguing that anything used by person more or less constantly (hearing aid, wheelchair, artificial limb...) must be not just effective in a medical/engineering sense, but also pleasurable and expressive. The book is glossy, a little unbalanced, a manifesto rather than a plan, but it's provocative and very fun.

[Richenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, inspiring even on other levels of design and critical thinking. I really enjoyed his speculative pairing of designers and disabilities in the last section. I'm inspired to go out and design all the solutions to everything now!
I found Pullin very enjoyable to read, it took me a while to get through but I'm so glad I read the whole thing!

[Olivia Gerber-Morón · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for those working or interested in accessibility. Very inspiring. Even if some bits are outdated (due to the fast pace at which technology progresses), it allows us to reflect on evolution. The book sends a clear message, very valuable: interdisciplinary collaboration is key to improve inclusion/accessibility in society, and designers should be absolutely included in the process. The second message is that accessibility should not be an afterthought. As I'm not a designer, but I work in accessibility, this book helped me to learn more about it. One thought that comes to me after reading the book is to find more reading on the financial part of things: how accessible are innovative designs to end-users? This was not discussed in the book, but it would have been worth mentioning it with some details.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a design student at an art school, worried that the curriculum is not aligning with my goal of working with design for disability, I found this book's message uniquely inspiring (that design teams working with disability should include art school-trained designers). Some of the examples are a little dated now, but the principles and message have a relevance that goes beyond any one particular technology. Definitely recommend if you work in any branch of design.

[mak]

boy he says a lot of things. those latter-half chapters filled with more concrete ideation are most interesting, if some only excruciatingly short and based too solidly in fiction for my taste... and i didn't completely agree on all the takes, especially the overreliance on aesthetics and beautification to integrate accessibility measures into mainstream design, but i think pullin does incredibly emphasize something most others completely miss: we must be playful in our search for new avenues!

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely inspiring must-read for every designer, regardless if you create anything for people with special needs or for people in general.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas in this book are intriguing. The main concept of this book is that just like eye-glasses started as a medical appliance and have now become a fashion accessory, are there other appliances/devices that disabled people use that should be more fashionable? Or designed to showcase the user's personality. Like hearing aids or watches for blind people. And I agree wholeheartedly that there need to be more products available for disabled people. And the more stylish they are, the better.

[Navid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pullin tries to challenge some of the traditional priorities of design for disability. Pullin is an art major graduate, so understandably he wants to explore the human side in design for disability. Although I agree with him in putting more emphasis on engineering experiences rather than engineering solutions, I felt that from time to time, his approach becomes too radical and insensitive.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

inspiration seemingly comes in surprising places...