SYLVIA H JANICKI

Designing For Rest

Rethinking Access for / from Chronic Illness

In this project, we share a case study of using critical disability studies to design for chronic illness. Specifically, we draw from the
Political/Relational model of disability to explore designs for rest.
Through a 6-week design collaboration, we brought together different design perspectives and worked through tensions between utility-oriented product design approaches and critical disability approaches for access. Our process yielded three design strategies: 1) moving from designing a product to designing a provocation; 2) using mapping as a process of building collective understanding of the built and social environment; and 3) re-imagining institutional practices around access as a starting point for design. We end by unpacking tensions in our design process and sharing some reflections on how to critically design for access in HCI.