An Assistive Technology Project: Product Design Engineering and Enable Ireland.

Lecturer: Bernard Timmins

As part of the Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Product Design (DT001 -  School of Manufacturing & Design, Faculty of Engineering, DIT), 4th year students taking the Medical Device module in the first semester will receive a brief presentation from the Assistive Technology (AT) manager in Enable Ireland, meet AT users and discuss their user needs versus products available on the market.

Having visited Enable Ireland, each product design student will develop an initial product concept where they briefly describe and quantify the disability of their target user, illustrate and detail how users will benefit from using this Assistive Technology design concept by means of a report, a poster, and a presentation. Last year the posters were exhibited in CHQ in June, also for a month in Microsoft at an Assistive Technology conference. BT also sponsored a prize of €1,000 for last year’s winner.

What do students get from it?

The students learn skills in meeting and dealing with clients with disabilities. They learn to assess the assistive technology needs of this client group. Beyond this particular client group, this project provides the students with an understanding of the problems, issues and opportunities that a Product Design engineer will encounter in industry.

What does the community get from it?

Enable Ireland benefits through the proactive inclusion of people with disabilities in the development of product design concepts. They also benefit from the development of a long term relationship with the 4th year of the Product Design programme and the possible research and product development that can arise for their serivce users from this.

Click here to see a clip on this project as part of RTE's Nationwide programme that featured volunteers and Students Learning with Communities from DIT.

Community partners:

Conference Presentations:

These papers were presented by DIT staff (Lecturer Bernard Timmins), DIT students (Andrew Deegan and James Brosnan) and community partner (Siobhan Long, National AT Training Service Manager Enable Ireland) who were all involved in this project: