ProAesthetics: Changing How We View Prosthetic Function

Thumbnail Image

Files

3517428.3550386.pdf (852.36 KB)

Links to Files

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3517428.3550386

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1145/3517428.3550386
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/26306

Collections

UMBC Information Systems Department
UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1991-6062

Date

2022-10-22

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Abler, Susanna and Foad Hamidi. "ProAesthetics: Changing How We View Prosthetic Function." In Proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 59 (22 October 2022): 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3517428.3550386

Rights

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org.

Subjects

Abstract

There are multiple perspectives that must be considered while designing a limb: The engineering requirements, the visual and aesthetic appeal, the needs and wants of the client, and how these designs impact users physically, socially, and mentally. Historically, the main focus of design has been on the engineering requirements while neglecting the individual’s needs or desires for aesthetics which are seen as secondary concerns. However, these aspects still hold important roles in how the user views and connects with their own limb. In order to better understand the impact that aesthetic design has on the individual, this exploratory case study aimed to create custom-designed prosthetic limb covers for lower limb amputees. This poster includes the fndings of the research and design process, including related works, the interview, design, and prototyping processes, as well as issues that occurred during the project and how they were either overcome or could be addressed in the future.