The second cohort of students working on this project included Luis Garcia, Zoe Krug, Jennifer Vandermeer, and Charles William, all of whom took part in this project as a part of their 4th year capstone projects under the supervision of Professor Bjarki Hallgrimsson.
As a cohort, this group travelled to the Kasese district of Western Uganada in February 2014 with Prof. Hallgrimsson and Navin Parekh, the founder and president of CanUgan, to conduct fieldwork and to enrich their understanding of how their designs and products would be used by locals.
All of the student projects funded by IDRC assisted the Mobility Lab in moving forward with deeper knowledge of designing for mobility in a rural African context. It was undergraduate student Jennifer Vandermeer’s project that the lab decided to pursue further.
A final outcome of this IDRC-funded project was that Jennifer’s project, the two-in one tricycle wheelchair combination product that could be manufactured in the local context, became a primary focus for the future efforts in our laboratory. Our intention to further co-develop an improved mobility product with the local actors allowed us to obtain funding from the Swedish Promobilia Foundation to continue this important work.