Luthiers del SXXI – Project collaboration

I was invited to participate as a collaborator and academic on this project, Luthiers del SXXI, as part of the Creative Coding component, held at the Institute of Informatics at the Universidad Austral de Chile. This project, led by Teodoro Danneman, had as its main goal to empathise with the needs of users with reduced physical capabilities through music as an embodied language. To do so, students from informatics followed a co-design process with users from TELETON, a non-profit organisation that focuses on improving the quality of life for disabled teenagers and children.

As part of my participation, I taught some aspects of qualitative research for engineers and ran what we called an empathy workshop, where the students followed the instructions of the empathic modelling technique to put themselves in the shoes of users with reduced sight. As part of the empathy module, they also practised interview techniques such as reflective listening and other ideation techniques.

The methods employed in this workshop series were applied to the design of inclusive musical instruments, culminating in a concert/Jam.