In answer to the nuance around disability’s definition (Shakespeare, 2018), designers must be equipped to respond to the varied situations that disability presents. Cited literature shows that transferable and applicable inclusive design methods are scarce (Gieben-Gamal & Matos, 2017; Oertzen et al., 2022; Subray, 2018). And while notable advancements in the field of disability design are documented (Hawamdeh & Abdelhafid, 2023; Mack et al., 2021; Reda & Chidiac, 2025), established methods on undertaking disability design projects are inaccessible. Indeed, participatory design situations and their diversity impose the question of the ways design can account for the wide spectrum of individualities when designing for and with disability. In quest to answer this query, we resort to Psychology of Design (Carbon, 2019) where we utilize psychology methods as vessels for better design choices. More specifically we propose an operationalization of the concept of Computational Social Psychology (Cushman, 2024) as basis for creating a toolkit concretizing a responsive design process to bridge the disruption between disability design theories and its practice.

Project by Khira Aloulou, Prof. Rosan Chow & CCC