Making Space for Other Voices: Hands-On, Human-Centered Design Delivered Online

During the spring of 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was necessary to rapidly translate a new human-centered design studio course for first-year biomedical engineering students from a face-to-face delivery mode to a remote delivery mode. In addition to disrupting plans for hands-on design prototyping experiences, stay-at-home orders associated with the pandemic disrupted plans for students to interact substantively and empathetically with potential users, which is the heart of human-centered design. The challenge was therefore to provide students without ready access to machine shops, 3D printing, or other people with some form of the educational experiences promised in the course syllabus.