Design for Assistive Technology: a Preliminary Study

The Integrated Product Development (IPDP) for Assistive Technology (AT) is a complex process that involves different areas of knowledge. This process normally uses methods, techniques and tools that help IPDP in a Concurrent Engineering environment, providing the integration of areas to meet the AT product requirements. In fact, it should be noted that the requirements of AT product user have different needs once the users have physical, sensory or cognitive limitations. This is the case of people with disabilities and physiological aging, whose population is globally increasing on a significant scale. Thus, there is a gap in the IPDP to comprehend and interpret data of the specific needs users to set the Product Design for Assistive Technology. This gap can be filled by a moderator that attributes an assisting function in the information mediation between multidisciplinary areas for the development of the product design oriented for AT. This paper presents a preliminary design model oriented for Assistive Technology and its structure performs a moderator role in IPDP in order to meet the users' expectations and allow reliable and easy information sharing between design participants. Data collection is a survey of existing IPDP models and configurations of “Design for” that support the stages of the development process. This approach make possible to detect and provide relevant data, which includes the most used and significant processes. As a result, we can highlight the key functions identified in the Design model for Assistive Technology.