How to teach interdisciplinary: case study for Product Design in Assistive Technology

Abstract

In the medical field, Assistive Technologies (AT) are one of the most dynamic due to the evolution of the population (elderly and disable people). Dedicated products are complex to design and to manufacture because of the end users' specificities and particularities. The integration of multiples competencies in the design process are necessary to be able to define a complete list of requirements. This collaborative work with the involvement of the end user necessitate a reflection about the design method. Statistics of products abandonments illustrate the difficulty for companies to create a favorable working environment taken into account multiple parameters from various expertise.Based on these states of difficulties, the present study aims to develop an interdisciplinary experimented teaching situation focused on the use of Rapid Prototyping. The AT field has been chosen to develop this design process teaching. The favorable pedagogic context takes place in the Industrial Department of the Federal University of Paraiba. The proposal was to implicate several departments from this university to organize a complete course with the objective to teach Interdisciplinary in graduation level in the university: the initial idea was to give all necessary resources to the groups of students (two types of progressive workshop during the course); they choose the ones that are necessary to design and prototype something adapted to the user's requirements.