Territory map – I created my territory map on a lsit basis, as I tend to organize my thoughts into lists, however I wanted to link together my readings and research areas that I study in my downtime and am interested in.

PROJECT SEM 2

My plan for the next project I embark on is to research deeply into Dyslexia and Dyscalculia.

From 2018-2019 I lived with a family in Hamilton and became good friends with their sons; Max and Danny (names changed for privacy). The older boy Max had severe Dyslexia, having difficulty reading streets signs or filling out application forms at the age of 22, and the younger son, Danny, had Dyscalculia. This inhibited his sub-conscious knowledge of mathematics; time, measurement and basic calculation were of huge difficulty even at the age of 20.

Having myself grown up as a very literate person, reading books since as long as I can remember and never having difficulty learning new words or imagining lines of text, watching Max’s struggle with grammar and spelling effected me more than I realized. I had never seen such a severe case before in all my years of life witness. I spent a lot of downtime in that year researching ways I could help the sons or do my part to make their lives a little easier, however I was shocked at the lack of information surrounding the subject. Even after visiting their mothers’ special education classes, I couldn’t believe how much the kids were left alone at high school, struggling through long essays. Imagine the kids who’s parents couldn’t afford special education!

There is very little information online for parents and caregivers of children with any learning disability. No available activities or ways to reduce the child’s stress. I believe this leads to the gap I have witnessed between parent and child, because the mother or father just does not know how to help or have any tools to encourage their child.

When I first thought about doing this project I wasn’t sure whether I should targets the parents of the kids who have these learning disabilities or the children themselves. Kids with these disabilities, especially looking at Dyslexia and Dyscalculia are often at an age range from 4 to around 12 when it is discovered. That is the most important time when any learning hardship should be targeted. In relation to a project I could create, it will be difficult to make a platform targeted towards the younger generation, for example aged 5 to 10, because they are not able to use technology in the same way that teens and adults do. If I began researching towards parents and caregivers of these kids as well, I could create a collective of really useful information for teaching at home or at school. I wonder whether that may be more useful in the long run because more people will be able to access it and then when needed the teachers can always show it to the kids or give the activities to the children. These are areas I look forward to researching into.

The above images are notes from my first meeting with Marcos, where I explained my project out loud for the first time. He walked me through some ideas which moved my mind towards people and issues I can begin researching.
A big one which we talked about was designing for the a sensory experience. Children with Dyslexia and Dyscalculia are often much more visual learners than written learners, as it is their most productive means of taking in information. I will be researching into Elena Lupton’s “Design for the Senses” publication, as it hosts useful information on this topic,

My personal topics of interest are based around visual language and storytelling so I could perhaps incorporate some of that into whatever I end up designing!