Month: April 2025

Reading this made me think about how design for people with disabilities is often overlooked or treated differently from regular products. I was surprised to learn that something as useful as a leg splint could also be inspiring in its design. It showed me that design doesn’t have to be boring just because it’s made for a medical use. I also liked how the author talked about fashion and disability. Glasses are a good example of how something can help people see better but still be stylish and accepted by everyone. The book made me reflect on how design can be both helpful and creative, and how we need more balance between solving problems and exploring new ideas in design especially in the disability world.

Concept
My project will be inspired those old music boxes with spinning ballerinas. Ideally, my project would feature a spinning ballerina or just a figurine, LED’s that would synchronize with the music, and an aesthetic, coded background that adjusts to the mood and rhythm of the music. It would have multiple song options, and based on the song picked the ballerina, LED’s, and screen would change and be synchronized to the tempo and mood of the song.

Implementation

The p5.js component of the project will generate a visual background on a screen that reacts to the mood and rhythm of the music. As the music plays, the background will shift in real-time, creating patterns or abstract shapes that match the mood of the track. For example, more upbeat, energetic songs could produce fast-moving, bright, dynamic visuals, while softer or slower melodies might evoke slower, more tranquil visuals. p5 will also be in charge of the user interaction, the user will be able to  interact with the system through buttons on the screen, where they can select which songs to play.

Arduino on the other hand will serve as the main controller for the mechanical and physical elements of the installation. It will control the motor for the ballerina’s spin and manage the LED lights, ensuring that both respond appropriately to the music.

Design Meets Disability

This reading made me reconsider how I think about design in the context of disability. The leg splint designed by Charles and Ray Eames specifically really stood out to me, because it was initially created to help injured soldiers, but ended up influencing furniture that became iconic. Its actually fascinating how something made for a medical purpose could also be seen as beautiful and timeless. This really challenges the idea that medical or assistive products don’t need to look good, and that their purpose somehow makes good design less important. This made me think about how we often overlook the innovation that can come from designing for smaller, more specific needs, and how that innovation can influence much broader areas. What stayed with me most was the idea of tension between problem-solving and creative exploration in design. The author describes how the Eameses worked within two different approaches, so one that focused on solving practical issues, and another that played with form and possibility. That mix led to some of their most important work. It made me wonder why design for disability today is still so dominated by clinical or technical thinking. Where is the space for imagination and experimentation? This feels like a missed opportunity, and I think if more designers brought in artistic and playful approaches, we might see tools and products that are not only more effective but also more meaningful and engaging for the people using them.

Design Meets Disability

When reading about how eyewear went from medical necessity to iconic fashion accessories, I thought about how headphones could go down that route as well. Hearing aids are designed to be small and discrete, which can even hinder their abilities. However, nowadays in popular fashion, big chunky headphones are worn as part of the outfit. For example, people purchase overpriced AirPod Maxes despite better quality noise-cancelling choices out there for cheaper. However, Maxes are a symbol of status and have a clean slick look to them that help complete the outward appearance someone’s trying to uphold. Ear jewelry is a huge part of the fashion industry and part of everyday accessorizing for some people, but at the same time, hearing aids are shameful. If accessibility and fashion designers could work together to create something people with hearing impairments can be proud of , it’d be like the difference between consuming bitter medicine versus gummy vitamins.

I really liked reading about Hugh Herr with prosthetic legs that do more than legs can do. They actually help him perform acts in climbing that able-bodied people cannot. Perhaps prosthetics shouldn’t aim to replicate limbs but to achieve beyond what’s possible. There’s so much more freedom to create and add; prosthetic limbs shouldn’t fit inside a box to replicate what society deems as normal. This ties back to the idea of designing “invisible” and discrete products, implying an underlying shame attached to them and having a disability. However, confidence stems from being proud of oneself. If these products inherently disregard its user/wearer, that’s hard to achieve. Having more interface designers in this field could alleviate such problems.

Features:

• An ellipse in p5 moves on the horizontal axis controlled by a potentiometer on the breadboard
• Clicking on the left side of the screen makes the analog LED brighter, clicking on the right side of the screen makes the LED dim from p5
• We took the gravity wind example  (https://editor.p5js.org/aaronsherwood/sketches/I7iQrNCul) and made it so every time the ball bounces one led lights up and the light sensor controls the wind direction
  

  Video:

P5 sketch:

Arduino Code:

// Inputs:
// - A0 - sensor connected as voltage divider (e.g. potentiometer or light sensor)
// - A1 - sensor connected as voltage divider 
//
// Outputs:
// - 2 - LED
// - 5 - LED

int leftLedPin = 2;
int rightLedPin = 5; // analog

void setup() {
  // Start serial communication so we can send data
  // over the USB connection to our p5js sketch
  Serial.begin(9600);

  // We'll use the builtin LED as a status output.
  // We can't use the serial monitor since the serial connection is
  // used to communicate to p5js and only one application on the computer
  // can use a serial port at once.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);

  // Outputs on these pins
  pinMode(leftLedPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(rightLedPin, OUTPUT);

  // Blink them so we can check the wiring
  digitalWrite(leftLedPin, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(rightLedPin, HIGH);
  delay(200);
  digitalWrite(leftLedPin, LOW);
  digitalWrite(rightLedPin, LOW);

  // start the handshake
  while (Serial.available() <= 0) {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH); // on/blink while waiting for serial data
    Serial.println("0,0"); // send a starting message
    delay(300);            // wait 1/3 second
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);
    delay(50);
  }
}

void loop() {
  // wait for data from p5 before doing something
  while (Serial.available()) {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH); // led on while receiving data

    int left = Serial.parseInt();
    int right = Serial.parseInt();
    if (Serial.read() == '\n') {
      digitalWrite(leftLedPin, left);
      analogWrite(rightLedPin, right);
      int sensor = analogRead(A0);
      delay(5);
      int sensor2 = analogRead(A1);
      delay(5);
      Serial.print(sensor);
      Serial.print(',');
      Serial.println(sensor2);
    }
  }
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);
}