---
layout: default
modal-id: 7
date: 2013-01-31
img: themis.png
alt: UOCD
project-date: Spring 2013
client: Olin
title: User-Oriented Collaborative Design 
size: 5
tags: [Design, Project]
description: "As part of Olin’s User-Oriented Collaborative Design course, I worked for a semester with parents of visually impaired children to understand their experiences and design a product based on their challenges and values. 
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 <br/> After interviews with dozens of parents, children, educators and community advocates, my team realized that getting people to challenge visually impaired children is a difficulty for many parents. They’re trying to raise their children, while teachers, family members and even other children often go out of their way to make sure visually impaired children aren’t challenged or disadvantaged. These people, while meaning well, are making it so visually impaired children are not prepared to handle the real world. Many parents spoke about being exhausted from simply trying to get teacher to challenge their students.  
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 <br/> Our solution: Themis, a VR headset giving anyone the experience of being a visually impaired person with the tools and experience necessary to thrive. Themis totally simulates the sight, hearing, and some of the tactile sensations experienced by a visually impaired person completing a variety of tasks. It allows users to walk through these experiences first on their own, with the sense of a visually impaired person, and then with expert guidance to help them understand the actual experience of a visually impaired person, who has tools to navigate the world. 
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  During this project, we encountered a variety of design challenges, but the most prominent was the fact that parents wanted us to design for their children, not them. In interviews, every idea we co-designed with was changed into a product for the children. Essentially, in their eyes, we should focus on designing for their children, not them. The course guideline was quite clear; we were designing for the parents. To help overcome this challenge we changed our co-design approach and introduced our ideas as tools focused on the child that the parent could use. With this approach, we narrowed in on Themis as the idea that parents found the most valuable. 
"  
---
