Human-Centered Public Transportation Systems for Persons with Cognitive Disabilities - Challenges and Insights for Participatory Design

Abstract

In this paper, we present a participatory process for designing new socio-technical architectures to afford persons with cognitive disabilities the opportunity to use mainstream public transportation systems. This project faces two unique challenges: (1) there are no true “experts” who understand all facets of public transportation system design, operation, and maintenance; and (2) each person with cognitive disabilities represents a “universe of one,” preventing the technology designer from thinking in terms of typical “user classes.” Participatory “in-the-world” design is therefore a necessary and critical facet of this research, and the design process must include members from diverse communities. Our design team participants include assistive care specialists and family support organizations, urban transportation planners and managers, hardware and information technology designers, and university researchers. Designing for a diverse user population or a complex system acts as a “forcing function” for using a participatory approach, and it is simply impossible to create a good design without it. This paper will highlight insights from this process that have illuminated our research efforts.

Keywords: caregivers - participatory design - personalization - technologies for persons with cognitive disabilities - transportation systems - universal design - universe-of-one