We were tasked with designing products, services, or experiences and the associated materials to improve workplaces and businesses through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This required me to explore and unpack, through an intersectional approach, the existing challenges diverse communities and members face inside different organisations.
This capstone project tackles the importance of workplace well-being and wellness of employees with spinal and musculoskeletal disorders and asks the question, “How might we better improve the distribution of suitable ergonomic technology to employees to promote and improve the well-being and wellness of those with spinal and musculoskeletal disorders and normalise the problem to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces?”.
Although ergonomics is already such a diverse industry, the prevalence of physical disability as a well-being challenge in the workplace has increased in the past couple of years. This was an opportunity to investigate the problem and explore ways to mitigate this. Finding issues surrounding ergonomic technology lacking the proper universal design and workplaces lacking the drive to welcome and embrace disability in the work environment made these the challenges I wanted to tackle. The focus and reasoning behind this project were based on this guiding quote;
"..it took a while for me to become comfortable in my new work environment, and it took me a lot of effort to get to this comfort stage. Back-and-forth requests with my employers to provide the tools I need to support my condition... I feel as though workplaces lack this initiative. It’s always a request from employees asking 'I need this', instead of our employers asking us the initiating question of 'What do you need?'".
As a designer, I strive to become the bridge between employers and employees to deliver and distribute suitable ergonomic technology and normalise spinal and musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace.
