Ergonomic and Assistive Technology Product Design

Design Discussions students and schools
1

After years of working in an unrelated field, what i’d like to do now is to design ergonomic or assistive technology products. The thing is, I am neither trained nor have experience in ergonomics/rehabilitation or design of any sorts.

What would your advice be:

  1. Focus on learning more about rehabilitation and ergonomics e.g. attending a physiotherapy or occupational therapy course, which would give me a foundation on which to build my design knowledge (either through self-study or a part-time course)

  2. Go to ID school and pick up my knowledge of anatomy and ergonomics on my own.

Any other thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.

2

Your looking at a very specialized skill set, most of the knowledge from each of the feilds you mention is not neccesary.

You should look at schools with good programs in the various areas and that allow self described curriculuums. Brown University is such, with possible studio’s at RISD. Otherwise look at combined ergonomics/bio-engineering/ID collaborations (CMU, DAAP) or do a dual major in Ergonomics and ID.
Although vital, ID is probably the least useful of the degrees to get, bio-mechanical engineering is the most useful.