Introducing Universal Design (UD) early in the design curriculum provides design students with a basic foundational understanding of the Universal Design principles and processes. Additionally, by guiding students on the application of the UD principles and process in designing a solution to a real-world need, students experienced the challenges and tradeoffs such design requires. In Spring 2016, teams of Sophomore-level Industrial Design students were assigned an educational exercise to solve a real-world problem of barriers experienced by people with disabilities during grocery shopping. Students employed the UD process in designing a shopping device enhanced with mobile/wireless enabled features that would be usable by a wide range of users. The shopping device had to function effectively and meet the needs of the general public (men, women, tall, short, etc) while simultaneously meeting the needs of users who have other physical and perceptual limitations such as mobility limitations and visual impairments. In this paper, we discuss the key steps of the educational exercise, as well as lessons learned for improving the exercise for future courses.
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