29 March 2011
Students design way of understanding aphasia
Photo opportunity: 2-4pm on Thursday, 31st March at the Dalhousie Building. Students will be making presentations with their co-designers - people with aphasia, carers and healthcare professionals.
Students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design will this week exhibit a range of communications solutions they designed whilst working alongside people with a debilitating mental impairment.
Aphasia is a condition caused by stroke, head injury or brain tumours. There are approximately 250,000 people in the UK with the condition, and primary symptoms include difficulties speaking, reading, writing, and understanding language.
Around 60 Product Design and Digital Interaction Design students at DJCAD, part of the University of Dundee, worked closely with sufferers, their family and carers, and medical experts as part of the Sidebyside project. The project challenged them to understand the problems caused by aphasia from the perspective of a person with aphasia and then worked with them to develop potential solutions.
The students involved will display their outcomes at the Dalhousie Building on Thursday, 31st March. These include public information films, installations that help people experience the disorientation of impairment, and products that aid communication.
Module co-ordinator Christine Kingsley praised the range of approaches to dealing with problems relating to the condition.
'The students will be showing the work they carried out while collaborating with people with aphasia in order to increase awareness about the condition and create design interventions that will help in their daily lives,' she said. 'It is also a celebratory event that highlights the strength of individuals living full and happy lives despite their acquired aphasia.
'The identity of a person is not defined by their impairment or disability, rather it is a part of how they live. Students will be telling stories that relate to what they have heard from, and shared with, people with aphasia, creating personalised or specific materials for individuals as they do so.
'What makes this event unique is that students have dealt face-to-face in the studio with stakeholders who have travelled across Scotland to take part. This type of work is more commonly associated with the latter stages of a degree programme, but these students have experienced the complex problems that face them in the 21st century workplace.
'They have worked in teams, entered a national design competition, and used their design skills in a professional context. This opportunity is not one that can be found in a textbook but one that has to be experienced by meeting and working with real people and real problems.
'By working collaboratively and co-operatively with the people they are designing for, these students better understand who they are designing for and why.'
The project used the principle of 'co-design', an approach to design that tries to understand the needs of the users and beneficiaries of design, rather than the needs of the designer.
The Sidebyside project is funded by Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland and the Scottish Government. Around 60 Level 2 Product Design and Digital Interaction Design students were involved in the project. They will be joined by health professionals and 30 people with aphasia and their families and carers at this week’s event.
The designs will go on display at Dalhousie Building Lecture Theatre L2 on Thursday, 31st March between 2-4pm, and students and their co-designers will make presentations to explain their findings and demonstrate how their solutions work.
Notes to editors:
- The national charity for aphasia sufferers is Speak Ability (www.speakability.org.uk).
- Students are studying an interdisciplinary Design Studies module as part of their BSc courses in Product Design and Digital Interaction Design. This module bring together different disciplines to tackle a range of social issues and raise awareness of design’s role in wider society.
- More information about Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland can be found at www.chss.org.uk.
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