Colloquia

Summary

The goal of this thesis project was to increase the creative confidence in making and hacking of disabled people so they could partake in the maker movement and create their own custom assistive technology (AT). Two participant activities were conducted: 1. An exploratory hacking activity by disabled people to design for justice where the participants hacked small household appliances. 2. A creative learning activity where disabled people used the Disabled Design Quest (DDQ) prototype, with a pre- and post-use interview and diary study. The results from activity 1 were used to ideate a toolkit made of a disabled community-led platform to learn about different types of making, and this was then further conceptualized and prototyped into the DDQ website. The impact of the use of this DDQ prototype on the creative confidence of disabled people was then evaluated in activity 2, which showed a self-reported increase in the creative confidence of all participants that completed the study. The interview transcripts and diary were further analysed using thematic analysis, which resulted in 18 themes which were used to answer the research questions. Results include participants going through a learning process with feelings of excitement, overwhelm and satisfaction, pride and assurance to be able to 3D print something and adapt/hack a product to better fit with their needs, they had to overcome some barriers and solve problems. They were able to play with 3D printing in a safe environment with community support, led by the DDQ website that, according to the participants, was clear, interesting and educational. The participants were eager to use the gained skills and knowledge about the possibilities of 3D printing in the future. Recommendations for future research include the developing the prototype further, and conducting an accessibility evaluation in a dedicated study with experts-by-experience as well as (web)accessibility experts. Limitations of this project include the analysis and interview being conducted by the same person, which can be influenced by bias from my personal disabled experience, as well as constraints both in cost of the study and the duration of this entire thesis project. The problem space addressed in this thesis cannot be solved in its entirety with a website. Nonetheless, this work aims to be a step in the direction of enabling disabled people to take back agency over their AT, but systematic change is still needed.