The first annual Adaptive Design Challenge is here at the University of New Mexico! Join us at the Centennial Engineering Center, Building #112 on March 30th from 10am to 2pm.

What is the Adaptive Design Challenge? It’s an approachable and educational way to experience the challenges faced by being in a wheelchair.

Join us to participate in some of the ABD’s group activity challenges:

· Enter the building using a blue button located at an inconvenient place or height
· Navigate backwards in a wheelchair without knocking over Jenga blocks in a classroom
· Navigate forwards in a darkened auditorium to the front of the space to collect an item
· Relay to get a cup of water, transport it, and transfer it to another person without spilling it
· Eat a Boba or jelly bean from a table top without moving hands

These challenges are related to the projects that students of the Adaptive Biomedical Design class are currently working on. Help us create designs that will improve accessibility!

Come give us your feedback on the prototypes:

· Perch, a device that provides a surface for people in wheelchairs to work with laptops and other instruments
· Cupholder, a device that provides a comfortable cup holder for a wheelchair user with limited upper body strength
· Button, a device that makes it possible for wheelchair users with limited upper body mobility to activate blue entrance buttons which are placed at inaccessible height.

Teams will be provided with soft prototyping materials that they can use to create an assistive device.
They’ll also be able to do a “phone a friend” kind of request for assistance from our experts (aka, students, faculty and staff who are in
wheelchairs themselves, and veterans and students on campus).

At the end of the challenge, give your feedback on the designs that the students are currently working on in class. That way, the students will get rapid feedback on their designs, with enough time to tinker with them for the rest of the semester and come up with a workable end result.