room7

Everyday products, services and environments are designed within tight budget and time constraints. Consequently, designers find themselves prevented from involving real end-users to assess the ease of use (i.e. usability and accessibility) of their creations. Lack of user participation during the design process may result in inaccessible products for a large number of consumers. This project focuses on the future commercialisation of a Simulation Assessment Toolkit (SAT), which 'reproduces' the symptoms of physical impairments older and disabled people may experience. SAT is to be used by decision-makers, designers, design educators and students as a method of assessing product and service accessibility. It allows the wearer to experience in a practical and low cost manner a wide range of problems faced by users with physical impairments, when they are not readily available due to constraints typically imposed on real-life design projects.