Design Jam for Accessibility in Urban Areas, a flagship event organized by NYU’s Design for America (DFA) student club was recently held at NYU Tandon’s MakerSpace in partnership with the Design Lab. Co-hosting this event was one of the initiatives taken by the Design Lab to encourage creative design thinking and prototyping. Through this event, students at New York University were presented with the rare opportunity of making the world more accessible.
Students dived in to the multiple stages of developing solutions using Human-Centred Design, they received mentoring from the members of the Service Design Collective in New York. To ensure that students get to conduct in-depth research, members of ADAPT — a non-profit working with people with disabilities — were also present to give insights and share their experience. The Design Lab aims at facilitating such events and fostering ideation by helping students understand the underlying principles.
The students observed the challenges faced by the ADAPT members and tackled them with innovative solutions by using design thinking and creative prototyping. Professor Anne-Laure Fayard, who also serves as an advisor to NYU DFA, and is the Faculty Advisor to the MakerSpace reminded students about the challenge of putting oneself in somebody’s shoes. At the Design Lab, MakerSpace Design Specialist, Christina Lafontaine supports students in solving such service design projects by mentoring and advising them.
