Thinking through design and rehabilitation

The initiative described in this paper explores how the concept of ‘design thinking’ can be introduced to people with spinal cord injuries (SCI) as a route to improved independence, resourcefulness and personal control. The underpinning premise of the study is that design thinking offers a kind of resourcefulness and the ability to think laterally about problems. The overall aim of this study was to investigate what design thinking might offer to people living with a spinal cord injury. In a controlled healthcare environment design thinking strategies were introduced as a way of supporting self-efficacy and cognition of perceived manageability, which has been shown to be positively associated with constructive health behaviour and adjustment to life changes, including a spinal cord injury (Bandura, 2004. Cicerone, Azulay, 2007. Dohnke, et al, 2007. Hampton, 2004). Potential intended outcomes were driven by the ideas that by introducing the concept of design thinking to people with SCI it would help build self-efficacy and offer people the confidence to make positive changes in the context of their own lives, experience and self-esteem. Two of the main factors in developing self-efficacy being experience in overcoming obstacles and persevering to obtain a goal, and observing peers succeed in a similar way (Bandura, 2004. Dohnke, et al, 2007). This paper presents work undertaken by the Art and Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University as part of a project relating to Design & Rehabilitation, an initiative instigated and co-ordinated by the Royal Society of Art (RSA).