The coolest thing I think we saw in the 9:th lecture was the motorcycle. I think that is really trying to go out of the box to make something really usable for someone that can’t use the normal “toys”. The really good thing is that the motorcycle looks really good. Of course it could be stigmatizing in a way that everyone sees that it isn’t a normal motorcycle, but the step from there to saying that it is a motorcycle for impaired people is much further here I think.
Therefore it is a really good example how to make things for impaired people but still try to keep the stigmatizing factor as low as possible.
The other video I really liked is the iBOT wheelchair. Of course, anyone would still see that it is a wheelchair, but making it look nice, and also add functionality, really raises the coolness factor in my opinion. The added functionality also makes the wheelchair more usable than a normal wheelchair, and the raised usability is really good too.
The other example is the other wheelchair where the user could “stand up”. This is an example where you add functionality, but the added functionality doesn’t raise the usability as much, both because it may look strange and raise the stigmatizing factor (because of several things – the slowness of the raising function, the user feeling naked etc) and because it could feel really unsafe.
Of course the iBOT could also feel unsafe, but when it comes to myself, I would probably feel more safe in this than the stand up chair. But maybe that’s just me.
Non-excluding Design 