#cr04

[littledesign-blog]

Design for Living

When people are thankful for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, they should also try to remember the person who helped to pass the Act - Justin Whitlock Dart, Jr, an American activist, he also co-founded the American Association of People with Disabilities.

In a civil world, everyone should be equal, they should have the same rights, and the ability to access same buildings/products. Universal design shall always be considered if it's possible to achieve.

People with disabilities have gone through many troubles beyond a healthy man's imagination. They want to be treated equal, and a lot times due to the "pride" issue, they do not want special treatment. There are many certain aspects that a good designer should considered before producing a product.

[anthonorris-blog]

An Accessible Scavenger Hunt?!

It was a close call Wednesday being caught up at work in New Albany till 3:00PM knowing I had a class and a partner to meet on campus within the next half hour. Well, that didn't happen but luckily I was able to communicate with my partner via text, sign in and meet them just as they were taking photographs for our first clue. 

Despite the harsh wind making it hard to talk from destination to destination I enjoyed the assignment. I think it is important and worth while to develop a class where students interact with each other and experience subject matter outside the class rooms, away from the projector. It is a different type of learning when you actually get to see and discover things for yourself rather then through assigned texts and pictures. 

While I learned new things about Ohio States Campus, which I will write about in A03, I think I most enjoyed discovering the library at Knowlton School of Architecture. It was cool to see the famous chairs we had seen in a previous powerpoint presentation while in class and, for me, offered a new, inviting place to take my studies. 

Aside from the scavenger hunt we also had a presentation on Accessibility. We watched a video showing how designers hold the responsibility, even more so today, of making things accessible. Ironically this tied into a conversation I had at Thompson Library with one of the woman at the Information Desk. When I mentioned this was for design she began to bring up things such as students having trouble accessing the stacks and the location of the restrooms, even how the doors were position facing each other for either men or woman. It just brought to my attention the small details of design/architecture that are so vital to making a design functional and accessible to all. 

[dsgn200tk-blog]

CR04

This class is going well so far.  The scavenger hunt showed some interesting views on certain buildings around campus.  I've been here three years now and to learn a little about some buildings I spend a lot of time in is fun.  I also enjoyed the video the other day on the wheelchair.  It was amazing to see this technology as I have not seen that before, even though the video seemed a little older.  I hope we keep exploring interesting designs that some of us might not have heard of, and I enjoy relating what we learn to real life objects and buildings.  It makes it a lot more interesting than just learning how to do something correctly or the right and wrong processes involved in producing certain things.  

[greatak-blog]

Step in the Right Direction. Like Jim Crow Laws

This doesn't have so much to do with accessibility as it does the thought you brought up and then was provoked in another class the next day. That of racism. I wonder if it ever had anything to do with skin color. Or if it was just the society that that people with different tegument pigmentation are perceived to bring. You justify the enslavement of blacks because they're so primitive where they come from, they're not really human. Humanity carries a certain grace, even if you share the species, if you don't have that class, you don't count. And so blacks are frowned upon because of their percieved savageness, making them good for work, you know, like a cow or a horse. But they got thumbs, so you can have them pick the cotton or clean your house without as much fuss as a cow.

Get rid of slavery, those perceptions are still there. You don't want these folks running free, they'll just revert to their old ways, we'll have Africa in our backyard, that'd be horrible! It's still not really because they're black, just because they're from such a barbaric place or share ancestry with it, a few generations down. And they've only been procreating with their own kind, so the barbarism couldn't have gotten watered down. Anyway, we'd never want to lower our civilization to their level, so they won't really ever get to breed outside the circle to ever get any better. Enter reproductive and social controls stage left with the Jim Crow laws. Gotta preserve our civilization and not let those savages run amok. Still doesn't seem like it's got anything definitively to do with skin color. Just heritage and where you're from and a fear that an undesirable society there could spread here.

But I dunno, now everyone would be quick to tell me that it's always been about skin color. But we don't hate trees because they're brown. Or prefer specific trees because of bark color, as a society at least. But I don't think it's really fair to compare the Americans with Disabilities Act to Jim Crow laws because of that fear and protectionism that are there with Jim Crow but not with ADA. We're not afraid of people in wheelchairs and want to make sure they can't effectively get into our buildings. We're just too lazy to really do anything better.

[oliviajonesdsgn200]

Course Reflection 04 (CR04)

CR04:

Our discussion in class covering Designing for Accessibility was perhaps not the most interesting lecture but it was certainly something very important that I feel a lot of designers forget to consider. I had no idea how many people were actually disabled and how important it is to make design accessible for those people. I thought it was interesting that this applies to all forms of design, even visual communications. I think that universal design is incredibly important to the future. I thought it was interesting that instead of creating separate utensils for left handed and right handed people, someone came up with the idea of creating utensils that apply to both. That is incredible "design thinking."

[get-big-get-big-blog]

CR04

The class this week has been quite interesting.  The scavenger hunt was interesting and helped me to learn of different designers and how their different designs have effected their buildings chairs and other forms of expression.  And also how they approached their designs differs based on their projects which was all learned through research.

PAC MAN

[marypo-blog]

CR04

In class Monday we discussed the market of impaired persons, and how it is largely ignored by production companies. I never really had thought about this, until the discussion we had. With all the technology we have today, it is incredible how un-evolved many aids are to those who need them. For example: the wheelchair, they have made improvements to it over the years-but looking at all of today's technologies, you have to wonder how it hasn't come farther. That market is larger than many people realize; and as we brought up in our discussion, you could become a member of thas sector at any given moment.

[ohiomatt33]

Dsgn200 CR04

This week in class we talked about accessibility and watched the video on the new wheelchair design, and Wednesday we did the design scavenger hunt around campus.

I was really impressed with the new prototype we saw for a wheelchair on Monday. When Gabe mentioned that's what we would be seeing, I really couldn't picture in my mind any sort of (plausible) new design that would be an improvement over the current designs. If I hadn't seen the prototype in action in the movie, I wouldn't have believed any of the claims about it. The user could fairly easily and quickly climb stairs, ride over sand and gravel, step up high curbs easily, and even rise up to reach things on shelves. The last part was what impressed me the most. I didn't really think technology would be advanced enough to keep a human upright in a chair, while being balanced on a set of wheels on top of another set of wheels. They showed the reporter catching a heavy bag of potatoes, and he remained upright, barely moving. 

With this innovation, I've realized that people shouldn't hold back their designs because of what they think about technology. If I was given the task of designing a new and improved wheelchair, I wouldn't have come to the same idea because I didn't think technology could handle it. Well, if my idea is spectacular enough, maybe someone can make the technology needed. So this video really showed me to think big if you want big results.

I thought the scavenger hunt was a really good way to show us that good design is all around us, especially at OSU. I had never been to the architecture library, and I thought that Knowlton was a really interesting and inspiring building when I finally explored it. It was awesome to actually see and sit in all these iconic chairs in the library, and see just why the Barcelona chair is so well-known. It's really freaking comfortable, and just looks good. I learned a lot about the history of the design involved with Ohio State's layout and architecture.