[community] Designers and Visual Needs

[Hadinezhad, Shafagh]

Dear community,

I am Shafagh, a master's student in industrial design at the University of Illinois, USA. I am currently working on my masters' thesis, a toolkit for designers to work and co-create with adults with visual needs. I am looking for partners who are experiencing partial or total vision loss in their adulthood to help me gain a better understanding of this experience. This would be a learning journey for me when I would listen to your stories, experiences, and challenges you face in communication with the environment that can lead me to designing more inclusive products or services. I hope we can take this journey together because without your help I will not be able to do this.

I will need about one hour or less of your time for the first interview.
For the next step, I would like to have your daily journals in the format of audio records for 1- 3 days when you record your daily routines for about 3-5 minutes each day. You may talk about your challenges or experiences during a specific task or general tasks during a day.

The last part would be your feedback on 1 or 2 design concepts of this toolkit which I believe will happen in about one month to know what changes should be made to the toolkit to improve it and make it accessible. That could be a half an hour session which may happen once or twice.

Overall, I believe it may take about 3-4 hours of your time for the duration of 2 months if you intend to participate in all three stages. Your participation in any of these stages or all of them would be appreciated depending on your preference and availability.

I am looking forward to hearing from you and working with you soon.

Warmest regards,
Shafagh

Shafagh Hadinezhad
MFA Candidate, Industrial Design, School of Art & Design,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign