Assignment 2

Watch the movie “Blind” (check on the movie page) and make some observations:

1. Are there any obvious errors in the movie (things that a blind person would or could not do)? Explain why you think this is an error.
2. Are there any interesting observations about the phenomenon of being blind that you think are surprising to you? Explain why you think that this would be the case.

Post your observations on the blog under the category “Assignments”. The posts should be between one half and one page long.

Answers:

1. In the movie Blind there is a lot of error in the moving of some tasks that I doubt that blind people can perform very well. For example when the blind lady she is able to say the right height of the killer when she was describing it to the    The reason why I think that an error is that it is almost impossible for a tell a person height just through voice so in this area I think there is a mistake in the movie.
2. Another error that I notice in the movie is the way she navigate the train station when she was under pressure from the killer. The way she ran in the train station was just too fast for a blind person.

 

2. The interesting observation about the phenomenon that I found interesting is the way other part of are organs works. Her other organs of her body became more active and she is able to feel people from a distance. Another interesting part is how she was able to navigate around and rely on her touch skills in other to carry out daily activities I found out that blind people depend so much on touching when they are carrying out their daily activities.

 

 

 

 

“Normality” and Stigmatization

The problem of stigmatization and the concept of normality are very tricky topics to analyze.

In my opinion those two situations are strictly correlated. In fact stigmatization occurs when something, or in this case someone, appears to be different compared to the majority. What is normality so, it’s a synonym of “common”. It’s what we expect to see, it’s when the reality that we are taking in consideration matches with our preconceptions.

Normality is a collective concept, there cannot be “normality” in a very heterogeneous group.  Normality is a common characteristic or the abstract conceptualization of it. An example can be done analyzing people’s faces. Of course every person is different, but we have a pattern in mind of what a face should look like. In a person with Down syndrome many times those patterns fails and we immediately recognize that this person is not fitting in our concept of “normality”.

Stigmatization is strongly bound to normality because is only when we see something that deviates from normality, something that we find weird, that we can stigmatize it.

I think that is impossible to erase the idea of “normality” because there will be always groups of people with specific ideas, or characteristics. Some of those groups will be very big, others smaller, and the big groups are obviously the one that create normality, their normality, the one that fits their characteristics. The power of collectivity is so strong that at some point the smaller groups start thinking about being different because everyone else tell them so. In some cases that makes you feel special, in other cases discriminated.

In this short paper I would like to analyze the specific task of designing for blind people. I find this impairment very interesting because we must consider a double approach to the process: the first one is the functionality of the tool we are designing, how efficient and effective it is for the person using it; the second is the aesthetic and in this case what we need to consider more is what other people think about it.

A very good approach in my opinion, in order to reduce stigmatization, is to design tools to reduce visually impaired people’s limitations. The first step will be to define which those limitations are.

Probably the most obvious is the low navigation skill. For a blind person is very hard to orientate him/her self and it’s very important to support this task because, if we want this person to be more self-sufficient as possible, the ability to move around independently is a basic one. In this case a good approach is probably to create a wearable tool able to suggest at any time the correct direction to take. A very important specification for this item is that it must be something that every person would wear/use, not only for the functionality (a non-impaired person probably doesn’t need it), but also for the aesthetic.

According to what I wrote above, speaking about navigation for visually impaired people, the best “tool ever designed” is the guide dog! The reason why I think so is that a dog is something that most of the people like, is something that many people have.

Another limitation for a visually impaired person is about recognizing other people. The only way for him/her is probably to recognize the voice and in some cases is not enough if the considered person is someone met only few times. Not being recognized by people can be very frustrating and if you know that someone may have problem recognizing you it may be a reason to avoid that person.

It’s hard to find a solution to this issue, an effective way to solve it may be to track other people and notify when they are near you, but I’m pretty sure that not many people will be fine about being tracked around with a gps device. This kind of solution is probably what we want to avoid, the one that may increase stigmatization instead of reducing it.

Those are just few examples of issues that a visually impaired person has, issues that may generate stigmatization. What a designer can really do is to speak with the people for whom he/she is designing for, understand their problems, observes other people reactions and understand which behaviors generate them.

The aim of the designer is to create tools that also non-impaired people can appreciate, both for the visually appealing and the useful functionality.

Sometimes is very hard to take into account both those aspects. Sometimes functionality is considered more. An example of that are the beeping street lights: indispensable for blind people but also useful for non-impaired ones. Many times happens that you are distracted or looking around while waiting the green light to cross the street, and the beeping sound is very good to warn you. Sometime is the aesthetic being in focus like sunglasses to hide eyes.

To conclude I think that one of the biggest role in this process of reducing stigmatization and increasing the “normality” area can be played by us, designers. We have the power and knowhow to create proper tools, we can shape people’s behavior providing new devices to help them in a more efficient way. The important thing is to always consider which can be the “side effects” of a new piece of technology in order to create a product that can be accepted by the user and the other people around him/her as well.

Blind: some observations

Blind is a South-Korean film directed by Ahn Sang-hoon in 2011.

The movie is about a young woman who lost her vision due to a violent car accident in which one of her brothers died. The story takes place 3 years later when an unknown psychically disturbed man starts kidnapping and killing young girls. The protagonist get involved in the police investigation as a witness because an unlucky coincidence that sees her accepting a ride from the killer during a rainy night.

Playing a blind character must be for sure a very complex task and in my opinion Kim Ha-neul (the protagonist) managed it very well, in fact she also won two awards for her positive performance in two different contests.

Nevertheless is possible to spot some behaviors that suggest us that the actress is not visual impared. For example something very hard to ignore are natural body reflexes. In some scenes is in fact evident that she react to a visual stimuli way before a blind person can do (In one scene the guide dog walks quickly to her and she is already perfectly positioned with her hands to “welcome” him).

Another aspect is how confident she is in running. Ok the situation is a bit extreme, probably if you are followed by a killer you don’t care much about safety, but at least placing your hands in front of you while running may be a good precaution to avoid smashing into things.

One last though is for the guide dog. It seems a bit dumb! Like at the beginning of the movie when she cross the street with the red light, and the dog is completely lost and confused as her.

Speaking about positive things that I personally learned watching that film are that blind people are comfortable with an iPhone. During the scene in which the protagonist is in the interviews room with the young boy, and he started blaming her for using a smartphone I was thinking the same. I wasn’t aware that an iPhone with Siri is better than many other specific product for visual impaired people.
Moreover I reflected a lot about how a blind person can understand what’s surrounding her/him. Maybe this aspect is a bit forced in the movie, I think that the description of the suspect by the protagonist is a bit too much detailed, but still is impressive how many information she was able to understand.

One last aspect that I would like to discuss is that at the very beginning of the movie, when she went to speak with the man at the police academy and he refused to admit her again. In my opinion he was right, she made a huge mistake that night 3 years before and she doesn’t seems to understand this fact. Even later, when she goes to the orphanage speaking with her “mother” both of them blamed the guy for being intolerant against impaired people. In my opinion he was just objective and correct.

To conclude this small reflection I can say that I enjoyed the movie. It also opened my mind about Korean movies! I never tried to approach the eastern movie culture.

You do not want to scare them off too soon

We live in a society in which common things are labeled as normal and things outside the sphere of “the ordinary” are seen as strange.

In many cases being different can be considered a point of strength, something that characterize a specific person and make her/him unique. Unfortunately too many times this positive meaning of being “different” remains as long as the specific characteristic that makes a person particular imply an advantage for her/him or for the other people around.

For this assignment I chose the quote “you don’t want to scare them off too soon” because I think that when the society starts pointing at you as a different person, even if you are aware of your situation, it makes you feel discriminated for something that is your being. It makes you feel lonely, makes everything harder.

In my opinion a good way to live your life is thinking that is not important what the others think about you, the only important thing is what you think about yourself, how you see yourself (as long as being yourself doesn’t involve hurting other people).

On the other hand the problem with this philosophy is that works only if you have a real choice, an alternative. Explanation needed: if I decide to make new friends what I do is going to a pub and start speaking with random people that I think may be interesting. What can happen is that at the first try I find a person that hate Italians. What I can do at this point is try again with someone else, how many people can hate me because of my nationality? Probably a second try is enough to find someone without this hateful feeling. But what happen if the reason why the other people feels hesitant in your regards is that you stand on a wheel chair, or if your arms are missing/deformed, if you have a physical visible impairment?

I think that not many people are 100% comfortable being real friend (not just 2 words sometimes) with a disable person, even more if that person is not self-sufficient.

Speaking about misconceptions that are many times associated with impaired people is thinking that they are unable to take care of them self. Sometimes is true, but many other times impaired people are able to live their life exactly as non-impaired people do. Another common misconception is to think that people with disabilities are sick or constantly in pain, of course sometimes they may get sick and occasionally may be in pain, but it’s rarely due to their condition.
Other common misconceptions are that people with disabilities should be treated differently, or that being disabled is a personal tragedies and deserves our pity, or that impaired people mainly wants to associate with each other… and many others.

How to counter all of those wrong ideas? Well it’s impossible to force someone to forget about them, what can be done is to make people aware of what is being disabled and what is not. I really think that this course is a very good starting point to increase our awareness about this topic and something similar should be discussed not only in the university, but also in previous schools.

Another topic that must be discussed is how hard can be to decide where is the border between “abled” and “disabled”. Something that we have to keep in mind, doesn’t matter if we are speaking about impaired or non-impaired people, is that we cannot judge a fish according to his ability to climb trees.
If me, as a “normal” person, I’m not able to jump the rope because my body coordination is not precise enough for this specific activity am I a disabled person? Well, literally yes, but is the society considering me disabled? Probably not. The difference between me and a person in wheel chair is that we see walking as an activity that “everyone” can do, and if you cannot walk everyone can notice it (and of course it involves way more problems compared to the inability to jump the rope).

Going back to the initial quote, it’s easy to understand why disabled people may worry about meeting new people. You never know to which of the known misconceptions they may believe, or what they can think about your disability and what kind of behavior they may use with you only because they think you deserve a special treatment due to your condition.

Many times people get scared about what they don’t know, it’s just easier to stick with known situations.

Assignment 3: Design, stigmatization and normality

This assignment will look at different ways of design that could help minimizing stigmatization and broaden the “normality” area.

Design to minimize stigmatization

Clearly visible support tools used by an impaired person are most susceptible to stigmatization. Take for example the white cane used by people who have a visual impairment or a wheel chair usable by a lot of people (also without impairments). Why is it important to do something about stigmatization? Some people don’t care or are not affected by it but there are also people on which it does have a negative effect. More specifically can have an effect on their self-image which, also pointed out in the youtube series “Disability the truth”, is something that matters a lot in people’s everyday life.

So how can design help minimize these possible negative effects? The focus can be on designing the support tool in a different way. In the movie Blind there is a good example of this, the main actor has a ultra sonic cane that fits in your hand. This almost hides the support tool from the outside world and thus minimizes the chance of stigmatization. This transformation is a bigger challenge when looking at the wheelchair. Although it might not just be the form factor that matters but the way it functions or looks. A rather successful example is the customized Segway to serve as a wheelchair. Segway are used by a large number of people to just cruise around in a more convenient way. It’s looked upon as a cool toy. The wheelchair design looks quite similar to the Segway in the way it works which makes it a more cool object than the regular wheelchair. These are two examples of using design to alter the form factor or redesign an existing “cool” toy that help minimizing stigmatization.

There are enough people that might have ideas concerning wheelchair design or another support tool. One of the reasons why it is not easy to bring something on the market is the costs of testing and getting the tool licensed for use. Since there are many safety regulations that need to be met (quite sensible). Safety is of course a very important aspect of these tools but maybe the way we test specific support tools should be redesigned to make the market more accessible for smaller companies / individuals with smaller capital.

Design of the environment is another part that plays an important role in the process minimizing stigmatization. Often waiting lines for an event or place are separated because the “normal” entrance is not suitable for wheelchairs. This is not beneficial when trying to minimize stigmatization. Another example is getting in the bus with a wheel chair which can take some time because of the slow retracting ramp. One of the reasons why this is slow is because of safety reasons but there should be less time consuming ways (e.g. focus on the wheelchair design to be able to enter the bus by itself instead of the bus).
Putting in that extra effort, as a designer, to prevent people from sticking out because of environment adjustments, is something that’s crucial.

Broaden the “normality” area

What is normal? This question is answered differently from person to person, the answer might depend on the culture, the country. There are many normals. Glasses were designed for people with an visual impairment but nowadays some people wear glasses because it fits their style. Design of the glasses helped putting glasses in the “normality area”.

If something is out of the ordinary people tend to spot that rather quickly. This might be difficult to change since this is something that’s almost instinctual. Education and experience is an important factor to help people see things as normal. If you never saw a someone kicking a soccer ball that might be a very weird person/game to you. Only after experiencing it you move it into your own little “normality” area. What is normal is different from everyone’s perspective. Designing a program on schools to let kids experience impairments and educate about these helps broaden the kid’s normality perspective.

Design can be used in different ways which combined could be a solution to the stigmatization and “normality” problems. By creating a harmony between support tools, the environment and people’s personal “normality” view.

Stigmatisation and solutions?

For this post I will discuss how we are able to or will be able to broaden the normality and reduce stigmatisation for people with either muscle dystrophy or persons that are wheelchair bound. As discussed earlier in the course the people with visible disabilities are often more prone to stigmatisation then people with disabilities that are harder to see just by looking at someone. However I would argue that a solution for one type of disability is not exclusive and could be used to help others with similar problems. Hence I will discuss both and see what can be done with the technology available today and what might happen in the future.

First we need to define stigmatisation, I would define stigmatisation as a process in which a person is looked at in a special way because they are using specialised tools or equipment to be able to do something. This can be a feeling someone can get used to or not care about. However it is often detrimental to one’s self image and if we have the ability to alleviate it we should be doing that to the best of our ability. From the movie “Disability the truth” they interviewed a lot of people with variety of disabilities and the message from the persons in that movie were in an overwhelming majority of cases that self-esteem and self-image was what mattered most, which is why this is such an important topic.

So what do we use today? Usually if you have a walking impairment you are stuck with using some kind of wheelchair or electrically driven chair. These are usually not very aesthetically pleasing and you cannot go wherever you like, and in the case with the electrically powered chairs they are usually bulky and even more problematic than the wheelchairs. All of the devices are thoroughly safety tested to the point where it is getting to a ridiculous level. For example if you need a bed that you can lean and angle, you cannot get one that looks good and comes in for example a double bed format. You have to get a hospital style bed that has been tested for many times the weight specified.

There are people already making headlines by being innovative by themselves and modifying for example Segway’s into powered wheelchairs. Genny mobility is one such company that sprung from a disabled man’s idea of a new type of wheelchair that could traverse more terrain be electrically powered and not be horribly bulky. He was basically tired and not interested in the dour wheel solutions which were to him limiting and aesthetically questionable. He looked at a Segway and figure out that it could be modified to work for a seated person as well.

Figur 1 Genny Mobility 2.0

With its big wheels and relatively small frame you can get over to many more places than with a regular wheelchair and it also is quite a good looker that comes in a variety of colours.

There are also other fields being explored that exists today but might be even more useful in the future. One of those fields are exoskeletons. Exoskeletons are complete or partial body covering machines that can be used in a myriad of applications. One driving force behind the development of exoskeletons are the US army. However much of the technology used in the army application of the product can also be used for people with muscle dystrophy and wheelchair bound people. They work by enhancing your abilities for speed, endurance or lifting. Thus far there seems to be only one commercially available exoskeleton. It is made by a Japanese company called Cyberdyne. It comes in a few different versions (Fig 2) and is classified as a hard exoskeleton. It is important to note that they have taken their time to design the exoskeletons so that they are visually appealing. This means that they look like something that anyone could or would wear rather then something someone only wears out of necessity which should in theory reduce the stigmatisation associated with the device in question.

Figur 2 The HAL exoskeleton, lower limb and full body version

However there are also other versions of exoskeletons being developed. For example there are some exoskeletons that are soft working with fabric and small motors. These are unfortunately not suitable for wheelchair bound people since they lack the necessary stabilisation that hard exoskeletons give the wearer. However for people with muscle dystrophy they could be worn under clothes and hence minimise the stigmatisation of using the device. One such device is being developed by a team at Harvard University, it is still in its early stages of development but they believe that in the future with smaller motors and batteries they can make the exoskeleton almost invisible.

Figur 3 Harward soft exoskeleton

However to get rid of stigmatisation for good you will need to broaden the normality of these devices. This comes with a few problems, the first problem is price. These machines are expensive and will probably continue being expensive for the foreseeable future, The HAL exoskeleton can be rented for 1000$ US per month. Secondly the devices such as wheelchairs and exoskeletons are not used every day by people without disabilities. There are no reason to why a person without a disability could not use a wheelchair. However they are usually specialized tools that are cumbersome to get around in and are usually quite ugly. Some things are being done to combat this problem however it is a quite slow process, partly because the market is quite limited and partly because the restrictions that government agencies impose on testing for devices makes it both hard and expensive to be able to sell these through the government and for people to buy them through government aid.

Scientists and researchers think that sometime in the not so distant future everyone will be wearing some kind of exoskeleton in our daily life and no one will have to deal with this kind of disability anymore. This will drastically reduce the stigma associated with the devices. However until then all we can do is make sure the design of the devices we have today is as functional and aesthetically pleasing as we can make them.

Blind

The second assignment required us to watch a movie featuring a blind woman as the main protagonist. In this paper I will discuss how realistically the movie depicts blind persons. I would however like to start with a disclaimer that I myself am not blind and have no blind friends. So anything I discuss in this paper is based on what I believe the experience of being blind to be, as well as interviews and videos that I have watched featuring blind persons.

The movies protagonist Min Soo-ah turns blind and gets involved in a murder. We follow her through this murder drama while she is figuring out how to cope with being blind. She does come off as quite a good representation of a blind person and what struggles they face on a daily basis. However since this is a movie there is some discrepancies that I would like to address.

The biggest problem I have with the movie in question is when she is chased or is walking somewhere. She tends to keep a very straight line without any support, for example she runs in the subway station in a quite brisk pace without losing her way or sense of direction. This can be seen quite a few times during the movie. She is usually keeping a quite brisk pace, usually from what I have seen from blind peoples movements is that they are quite careful and doesn’t keep a pace that is quicker than a stroll. She also walks down hallways straight without having using the support of the wall. This is quite a hard feat as I have myself discovered trying to walk in a straight line with my eyes closed, from what I have experienced from this and what I have seen others experience is that you are quite likely to go off to a side and start walking in circles even though you think you are going perfectly straight.

There are also some inconstancies when it comes to her using guide rails. She tends to be shown using blind paths in on the floor when possible, however she doesn’t seem to use the guiderails at stairs in all situations, she seems to use them in certain situations and clearly in familiar environments so that raises the question why she would not use them in for example stairs.

However the movie also highlights some quite accurate points. In one scene while waiting for a green light to cross a road she misinterprets the sounds around her and is nearly run over when she walks out into the road while there is a red light. One interesting fact from this scene is that the drivers cursed her out. This can be a thing that has to do with cultural differences but I cannot see that happening all that often in Sweden, people here would probably yell if they didn’t know she was blind however once realising it they would be to ashamed to do anything else than to get out of the car and help the person in question.

The movie also does a good job at highlighting how vulnerable blind people could be to muggings and stalking. She has the killer barely a few meters from her and notices nothing and he just bides his time waiting for her to get off the subway so he can follow her.

Overall I think the movie did a good job for a thriller/drama to portray the life and struggles of a blind person. Some discrepancies are to be expected since the probability of there being staff on the team making it being blind is quite low. The movie would also lose much of its pacing and suspense with accurate portrayals of reality, this however is not exclusive for this movie. Movies in general usually bend reality to add excitement and suspense. I would argue that they can, and should be able to get away with it since the movies in question usually are works of fiction,

People think I have no fun at all

 

In the video “disability, the truth” people with different disabilities are being interviewed about their life and how their interactions with people are on a daily basis. There is a quote from the beginning of the video that explains how they see their daily life, “There is no burden about being disabled, it’s living your life”. This is one of the common misconceptions we usually have about people with impairments. That they cannot have as much fun as people without impairments or that they are incapable of enjoying their life.

In the video we get to meet several people all with different disabilities, some who were born with the disabilities and those who have gained them later in life. The central theme is about attitude and how misconceptions and stigma can destroy it. We learn that independence is quite important to the people in this video and when someone asks them if they need any help while doing menial tasks (like getting in and out of a car), the notion that they cannot do anything on their own might be reinforced. It is in human nature to want to help others, however it is also in out nature to want to be able to live a relatively normal life by ourselves.

When we think about disabilities today we often think of them as an amputee, wheelchair bound, maybe also blind or mentally handicapped. However there are a big spectrum of different handicaps that are more invisible then others. For example people with chronic memory loss or muscle dystrophy. These conditions might be just as problematic as others however since we cannot see them very well in normal life we tend to not think about them at all. For example a person with muscle dystrophy might be able to walk just fine from his or her car into a shop, only to have to sit down because of the strain from the relatively short distance. They might even be seen as inconsiderate or lazy because of their handicap.

So while most of the problems come from misconceptions being disabled can both have positive and negative impacts on your life, the impacts vary depending on what kind of disability and how long they have lived with them. The problem is usually that people do not understand what it is like to be disabled. Today we usually have access to all kind of tools to easy our way of life and the same is true for people with disabilities. They can usually function themselves and life ordinary lives. A wheelchair bound person for example can often go shopping by themselves, drive cars / motorcycles (with or without modifications) and generally do things that they want. One of the common things that were brought up was just this “I don’t need help to get out of the car, I have done it 10 times today already”. I think that it is important that we realize this, it is ok to want to help someone but they should be the ones asking for it if needed. Why do we actually think that they do need help all the time? It is probably because we have no idea how their lives actually are, and since it is a minority that are handicapped very few take time to educate themselves. The positive parts of the whole experience differ from person to person however a few people in the video mentioned that their outlook on life has changed a lot and they don’t take much for granted.

 

 

 

Assignment 3: Design for more

This assignment will be structured as a reflection on stigmatization and normality in general, but with a touch of hearing impairment as a focus. I will go through some different approaches to these problems, and reflect upon them.

Do you want to broaden the normality area?

To broaden the normality area might require habituation of things currently not in the area. The blunt and naive way would be to increase the number of users of supportive tools and design. For example, if everybody prefers a ramp as an entrance to a building, then there is nothing non-normal about using that ramp. The same goes for subtitles (which happen to be my topic for the group work in this course): they are so prevalent today that it is not particularly peculiar if someone uses subtitles. Now, we have been lucky to have some of these tools being so successful that they have been included in what is normal. However, only a limited amount of things get that. We just broadened the normality slightly. Is habituation of seeing currently non-normal things the only way to broaden the normality area? If it is, that would require a huge amount of habituation of an almost infinite amount of currently non-normal things and behaviours. It does not seem that practical.

Perhaps what is normal is not the problem. The effect of someone or something being outside the normal spectrum is mainly some looks from people. What if we accept that part and treat it as a part of being human (looking at things that stand out). Our vision is so good at finding “inconsistencies” that apparently require our attention – and we move our eye to that place. I suspect that this part of us will have to be accepted.

With that said, after that initial eye glance, we have possibilities to change our behaviour I think.

Is the initial eye glance always bad? I can imagine people wanting to attract attention and using fashion as a way to do that. I guess the difference is that with fashion you can choose how much you want to be noticed. There is often no such choice when it comes to dealing with some disability.

I guess accepting the (so ingrained in us) stares can be a challenge in itself, but I think we have to accept it.

So, so far, I have concluded (well..) that 1. broadening normality by habituation requires exposing people to an infinite amount of ‘deviations’; and 2. We can’t stop the very human thing of the eye glance to things that stand out.

What about any workarounds for these problems?

For the ‘initial eye glance’, we could try hiding that… which leads my mind to: Sunglasses! With sunglasses you can look wherever you want without people noticing that much.

This might be a naive solution but I just want to introduce the idea that it is possible to hide these eye glances.

Unfortunately, I do not have any other (more feasible) solution up my sleeve. Let us leave the initial eye glance topic for awhile.

Next up is discussing what we can do about the phases following the stare.

What about workarounds for the ‘infinity’ issue for habituation? Let’s consider the possibility tha we do not have to bump into the infinity issue. If we say that different combinations of known things does not – when put together – create a new unknown thing. We humans are often fine with dealing with infinite combinations of things if the parts that make up the combinations are all known to us. I am not startled when a person wears a particular sweater combined with a pair of jeans just because I have not seen that combination before. So, if we can habituate (-> normalize) bigger concepts, we might be able to cover large amounts of variations within these concepts. A simple example would be to focus on normalizing the group “hearing-support” instead of it’s individual variations. In that way, we create a group that is bigger, which means that it has a better chance of being seen as prevalent enough to enter the normality area.

It could be something to think about more.

When it comes to to designing for minimization of stigmatization, there are some things to think about.

The simplest solution conceptually is universal design. However, not all products are that successful enough to make their way into the mass market.

I can think of a few approaches of reducing stigmatization:

1. Hiding the activity from people
2. Stealthing the activity (hiding in public)
3. Making the activity cool enough to distract from disability
4. Shielding user from surrounding reaction (people).

If we think of 1. hiding the activity. That is a bit like hiding yourself because you can’t deal with the situation. It does not sound like a very noble solution, but I think it depends on the situation and the person. Some things you want to keep to yourself, or at least have to option to. If it is possible to move the activity to a private place and time, it should be an _option_. It might not make the one with the disability more comfortable with it, but sometimes it feels good to get to keep something for yourself. This way of hiding can be beneficial in the way that it lets you choose whether to tell anyone about your disability or not. For hearing impairment, this could result in you choosing to way of living that enable you to listen in a quiet place instead of in a place of noise.

2. Stealthing the activity (hiding in public). Eye lenses are a good example. (well, the example is a bit silly because glasses are not stigmatized that much today.).

For hearing impairment, this could be something like an invisible hearing aid.

Another option is to make excuses about not hearing; for example “I am tired today”. Or, you could just nod even though you did not hear.

3. Making the activity cool enough to distract from the disability.

The idea was that you had some supportive tool that in itself attracted attention, but not due to its supportive functions. Then the user of the tool could “explain away” negative thoughts about stigmatization through “it must be the fancy looks of the tool, and not me they are looking at”. It could go the other way around though: that the user feels extra stigmatized because of the increase amount of attention due to the fancy tool.

4. Shielding user from surrounding reactions.

This is if you have a noticeable supportive tool, but you shield yourself in some way from other’s reactions. This could embody itself as trying to come up with rational explanations for people’s behaviour (glances etc.): “Oh, they were probably looking at that car behind me”. Another way would be to try to not think about other people’s reactions, and therefore not specifically look for their reactions. Perhaps you could train yourself for this.

This point is difficult to apply to hearing impairment, since hearing so often has to do with people speaking with you. You would not want (or could) ignore the person you are speaking to.

I think applying these points to solving the needs of people with a hearing impairment is difficult. Hearing is often part of social situations.

So, instead of supportive tools, let us focus on what we can we do with the environment.

Let me mention, again, the wonderful subject of Universal design.

So much can be done to acoustically treat a place for better audibility of speech. If you design away the bad acoustics, you actually mitigate the disability (thinking that it is not a disability if it is not a problem). For example, you could design the floor plan in a restaurant to only have a limited amount of tables in several rooms (instead of one big room with lots of people). You could have table cloths on the table to reduce noise from cutlery and porcelain; and quiet furniture (chairs not making noise when dragged on floor). You can make sure that people’s faces are well-lit at the tables – making for easier lip (and body language) reading to compensate for bad hearing. There are so many things you can do.

The best thing with this approach is that you not only remove (well, ideally) the room for stigmatization, but you actually alleviate the actual disability which naturally makes the person feel better.

And I am sure people without a hearing impairment would love this too.

So, I just moved the problem of stigmatization for hearing impairment to an environmental problem. Good or bad? Well, certainty a challenge.

Somehow, it seems the ideal way to deal with stigmatization is to design for reduction of the disability in the first place.

This reflection on the subject has perhaps given rise to more questions than I started with, but I think that is fine. The more we spend time on the problem, the more we learn about it. I will not say that reflecting is enough of course, but thinking about the options before designing can certainty help you avoid some pitfalls.

To conclude I want to say that the problem of stigmatization is a type of problem I am not used to dealing with when it comes to design (design happens to come down to technical limitations often). This course has thrown this new type of problem at me and now I have to learn how to think about it – which is quite rewarding.

Assignment 3 – Designing for physical impairments

For this assignment I have chosen to write about stigma against people with physical impairments and possible ways to use design to help them in their battle against stigmatisation. I will talk about very broad design concepts and principles instead of focusing on a few concrete design examples.

Physical impairments are more often than not visible impairments. That means that people who have physical impairments face stigma every time they step out of their house. People might look at them funny and may even act different towards impaired people. The situation can be unbearable for some, so how can design be used to help people in need to make their lives liveable again?

In my view, there are two thing that has to be accounted for when designing aids for impaired people. The role society plays in what it stigmatises and what it doesn’t, in other words what society deems as normal and what i considers to be abnormal. The second thing that has to be accounted for is functionality.

Let’s start with stigmatisation. The cause of stigma against physically impaired people is that they look or act different. They might not walk like other people or talk like other people because of their impairments, which subjects them to be perceived as “not normal”. Of course, society has the biggest role to play when it comes to reduce stigma. Society decides what it thinks is normal and what is not normal, and stigma occurs when people see something as different or “wierd”. People with physical impairments might even be looked at as being mentally insufficient, even though their impairment is strictly physical. These condescending attitudes towards impaired people is what makes it difficult to broaden the normality area. In some places the stigma is so bad that good design might not even help. Everything that is associated with impairment might be seen as negative. In other places, like Sweden for example, design has a big role to play as our attitudes towards impaired people are not as bad as in some other countries.But even though it’s better here than in some other places it doesn’t mean that it’s great. There’s still stigmatisation here, even if it’s not always in the form of outright insults and maybe more in the form of stares and negative thoughts and attitudes, it’s still an issue that has to be adressed.  The best solution would of course be if stigmatisation was reduced as a result of social change, but that takes a long time, and people needs help with stigmatisation now, so good design is the best thing we have right now.

To design something that will cause people to react “less” compared to when they see an impaired  person without a thoughtfully designed aid might go a long way for some people. For example there are prothesis that looks similar to human arms or legs, coloured in the users’ skin color instead of a big plastic arm or some other bad solution. These types of simplistic, human looking products can broaden the normality area as the product does not stand out.

It is also possible to design in accordance to existing fashion paradigms to make the the aid more fashionable. This can be appealing to some people who might not just want a simple product, but something more according to their personality or their style. This can be very important because one way to reduce stigma is to make the user feel happy and confident with the aid that’s helping them through life.

Besides aesthetics the designer will have to think about functionality. functionality is the most import part of designing something that will be useful for a physically impaired person. If the object does not do what it is intended to do then there is no point in making it at all. But functionality without design is bad, and good design without functionality is also bad, so you’ll need both to design and functionality if you want something that will broaden the normality area and is useful. But even if it’s a great product, a physical impairment will still be visible and noticeable for all the world to see, and as long as our attitudes does not change stigmatisation will continue, even if a great product reduces it significantly. Design is a great tool and it can improve a lot of lives, but no amount of design can erase stigma. Our attitudes as a society towards impaired people is the only thing that can broaden the normality area permanently, and for that to happen we need more education and information about the subject.