Design Thinking for Technology Supporting Individuals With Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Developing Countries

This research is concerned with analysing the value of using participatory design, and in particular the design thinking methodology, as a basis for the participative development of interfacing technology for use by individuals with neuro-developmental disorders, with a particular focus on developing economies with restrictions in budget and know-how. It becomes crucial as our knowledge expands to ensure that tools developed to assist individuals with neurological disorders to live a full and independent life are designed in conjunction with the users concerned. Inclusive design, however, is not limited to the technology itself, but rather taking into account the individual as well as the wider community in the design. Design needs to also be based in social accessibility to counter stigmas and ableism views. This study found that design thinking has proven to be an effective framework for involving individuals with neuro-developmental disorders to come up with solutions that address their needs and should be used in future implementations in order to assess the results.

Responsible innovation in health and health system sustainability: Insights from health innovators’ views and practices

Although healthcare managers make increasingly difficult decisions about health innovations, the way they may interact with innovators to foster health system sustainability remains underexplored. Drawing on the Responsible Innovation in Health (RIH) framework, this paper analyses interviews ( n=37) with Canadian and Brazilian innovators to identify: how they operationalize inclusive design processes; what influences the responsiveness of their innovation to system-level challenges; and how they consider the level and intensity of care required by their innovation. Our qualitative findings indicate that innovators seek to: 1) engage stakeholders at an early ideation stage through context-specific methods combining both formal and informal strategies; 2) address specific system-level benefits but often struggle with the positioning of their solution within the health system; and 3) mitigate staff shortages in specialized care, increase general practitioners’ capacity or patients and informal caregivers’ autonomy. These findings provide empirical insights on how healthcare managers can promote and organize collaborative processes that harness innovation towards more sustainable health systems. By adopting a RIH-oriented managerial role, they can set in place more inclusive design processes, articulate key system-level challenges, and help innovators adjust the level and intensity of care required by their innovation.

Robot-Inclusive False Ceiling Design Guidelines

False ceilings are often utilised in residential and commercial spaces as a way to contain and conceal necessary but unattractive building infrastructure, including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services. Concealing such elements has made it difficult to perform periodic inspection safely for maintenance. To complement this, there have been increasing research interests in mobile robots in recent years that are capable of accessing hard-to-reach locations, thus allowing workers to perform inspections remotely. However, current initiatives are met with challenges arising from unstructured site conditions that hamper the robot’s productivity for false ceiling inspection. The paper adopts a top-down approach known as “Design for Robots”, taking into account four robot-inclusive design principles: activity, accessibility, safety, observability. Falcon, a class of inspection robots, was used as a benchmark to identify spatial constraints according to the four principles. Following this, a list of false ceiling design guidelines for each category are proposed.

Fair Shared Green and Recreational Spaces—Guidelines for Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Design: Tbilisi Municipality

These guidelines recommend development features and design specifications for inclusive green space provision in Tbilisi, Georgia.