Description
This project explores opportunities to empower occupational therapists (OTs), whose jobs involve assessing the unique needs and assistive requirements of students, to create customized assistive technologies (AT), devices used to maintain or improve the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Commercial solutions are typically rigid and expensive and cannot be customized to the unique needs of each individual. This introduces the conundrum, wherein OTs working with complex disability cases are unable to access the required ATs either because they don’t exist in a commercial sense or the OT lacks the ability to create them.
In our project, we worked with an OT to create a series of ATs for students, with the OT leading the design process and supported by AI and HCI professionals. Based on this project, we identified the tension and the value provided by AI in collaborative AT creation and design, offering opportunities for future progress. Some of our design desiderata are the following: (1) Support complexity rather than simplify it; (2) Ensure usable and persistent project memory; (3) Improve accuracy and transparency; (4) Provide content-aware guidance.