Co-designing assistive mobility for cramped Indian homes

A new study by Jyoti Rautela, Abinash Kumar Swain, and Madhan Kumar Vasudevan (arXiv:2606.15528) takes a participatory design approach to assistive mobility for people with lower-limb disabilities in Indian homes. Instead of the usual clinical or controlled lab evaluations, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and bespoke booklet-based workshops with 22 participants. The bilingual booklets used images and scenarios rooted in domestic design frictions—like narrow passages, crowded rooms, and heavy furniture—to spark storytelling, critique, and speculation about how people actually move indoors.

The findings reveal mobility challenges that diverge significantly from those seen in clinical contexts. Participants often resort to improvised movements or rely heavily on family members, as standard wheelchairs and walkers can’t handle tight spaces. Rather than prescribing a fixed set of solutions, the paper contributes situated insights into domestic mobility frictions, how participants articulate their needs, and the inherent limits of speculative participation across different socioeconomic and spatial realities in Indian households. This work underscores the importance of grounding assistive technology design in lived experience rather than abstract clinical metrics.