Marianella Chamorro-Koc

Seating in aged care: Physical fit, independence and comfort:

Objectives: This research was intended to provide a greater understanding of the context and needs of aged care seating, specifically: To conduct an audit of typical chairs used in aged care facilities; To collect data about resident and staff experiences and behaviour around chairs in order to gain a deeper understanding of the exact issues that residents and staff have with the chairs they use at aged care facilities; To identify positive and negative issues influencing use of chairs in aged care facilities; To deliver evidence-based recommendations for the design of chairs for aged care facilities. Methods: Methods included a chair dimension audit, interviews with residents, experts and carers and observations of aged care residents getting into chairs, sitting in them and getting out. Results: Results showed that residents, experts and carers all prefer chairs which are above the recommended height for older people so that they will be able to get out of them more easily. Armrests were essential for ease of entry and egress. However, many residents struggled with chairs which were also too deep in the seat pan so that they could not easily touch the floor or sit comfortably and were forced to slump. Most residents used cushions and pillows to relieve discomfort where possible. Conclusion: The implications of these issues for chair design and selection are discussed. Variable height chairs, a range of chairs of different heights in each space and footrests could all address the height problem. Chair designers need to address the seat depth problem by reducing depth in most aged care specific chairs, even when they are higher. Armrests must be provided but could be made easier to grip. Addressing these issues would increase access to comfortable yet easy-to-use chairs for a wider range of the aged care population.

Design Research: Methodological Innovation Through Messiness

The third wave of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) involves more ubiquitous and embedded forms of computing. Making these useful, usable and even delightful for people needs design research. The more technologies become enmeshed in our lives and the more dependent upon them we become, the more essential it is that they are simple for everyone to use and they do not let us down in those annoying ways we have become used to tolerating. Embedding computing into more and more of the objects and environments we interact with makes them less visible but more ubiquitous, making their usability essential but challenging at the same time. Design research is a mechanism which can help researchers, programmers and designers to understand how to create better twenty-first century computing systems and environments. This chapter discusses how design research can contribute to allowing third wave HCI to benefit the lives of all citizens rather than frustrate them.

Insights from studio teaching practices in a Creative Industries Faculty in Australia

Studio teaching is a long standing tradition and a signature pedagogy across a broad range of art and creative disciplines, from arts to architecture and design. However, the practice of studio teaching varies across disciplines and practitioners. Do these variances indicate different signature pedagogies in the creative disciplines? An exploratory study was conducted to examine how studio teaching is practised at a Faculty of Creative Industries in Australia, and whether those studio practices suggest distinctive signature pedagogies and creative transfer. In this article, we describe the study and offer insights into studio teaching practices in the creative industries disciplines. We argue that nuances and differences among studio practices in creative industries reveal different signature pedagogies. Our findings offer a unique lens on current approaches to creative disciplines education, where interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to teaching are encouraged in order to support and prepare a highly educated and flexible future workforce.

Why one size fits all approach to transition in Disability Employment Services hinders employability of young people with physical and neurological disabilities in Australia

The education-to-work pathways for young people with disabilities are becoming more diverse and lengthier in our post-industrial economy. Furthermore, it is recognized that a multitude of barriers still remain in securing employment at the end of these pathways. In this paper, we focus on Australia’s Disability Employment Services (DES) to understand how views of transition in DES policy may be influencing program rules in supporting secondary and tertiary students with physical and/or neurological disabilities in their employability and employment. We do this through critical policy analysis of DES and in-depth Interpretive accounts from service providers and advocacy organizations.

New Mobilities for Accessible Cities: Toward Scenarios for Seamless Journeys

While cities increasingly attest to plans to make their resources accessible for people with disabilities, the realities of achieving the travel considered integral to urban life continue to be frustrating and prohibitive for this group. Accessing the basic opportunities of contemporary urban life now presupposes the supports and resources afforded by new mobilities, combining virtual and actual travel and communication in negotiating our work, leisure, connections with families, and culture. For the researchers applying the new mobilities paradigm, this requires a focus that is suited to capturing movement and its spatial and temporal coordinates and should also turn to illuminate the darker side of these relationships: coerced immobility experienced by people with disabilities. This chapter discusses an approach to research and the development of design scenarios — concepts emerging from research that may inform design — that take seriously the role of movement, time, and space in the achievement of valued connections by individuals with disabilities with particular reference to the journey to work. In particular we apply, in a case study, concepts of time and space that are relevant to the in situ experience of getting to work; raising questions regarding the way getting ready and travelling are experienced in the context of risk and contingency, and the actual and potential role of the technical, material, and social environment. We then respond to the analysis of this case with a discussion about the way emergent scenarios can imagine “possible or preferable futures” for the mobile citizenship of people with disabilities.