Co-designing with 
Visually Impaired Children

Co-design methodology takes the user-centered approach a step ahead by including end-users directly in the design process. It ensures that their needs are well addressed by involving them as true experts of the experience. But when it comes to visually impaired children, it presents some unique challenges which mostly remain unaddressed with limited research in the domain.

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I collaborated with a fellow designer to conceptualize and conduct a co-design session with these children as part of her broader project around indoor navigation for the visually impaired. A one-day co-design workshop including different co-design activities around ideation, prototyping, and testing was conducted at Guwahati Blind School. We presented our approach, co-design activities, key learnings, and the best practices for organizing such co-design sessions with visually impaired children as part of this research paper. These contributions would help fellow practitioners to build more innovative and accessible solutions for visually impaired children, promote the inclusion of these children in the design process, and also teach them some hands-on design activities in the process. 

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The paper was presented at the esteemed Design for Tomorrow, 8th International Conference on Research into Design, 7-10 January. It is published and available on Springer as part of the conference proceedings.