Equitable Design Solutions

Background

Our sponsor, Professor Natascha Buswell, is driven by the ideals of universal design and increasing accessibility throughout all walks of life. Bring a professor, she recognized the need for a better lecture hall desk. None of UCI's lecture hall desktops allow for position adjustment (whether vertical or horizontal), leading to taller students having to slouch to fit their legs beneath the desktop and larger students having little space between their torsos and the desk. In addition, each desk is intended to be used by either left- or right-handed students, not both. Given that approximately 10% of people are left-handed, one would assume that about 10% of the lecture hall chairs would have left-handed desks. Most of UCI's lecture halls have less than 5%.

We conducted a survey of UCI students to see what improvements they would like in a redesign.

The three main points summarized from survey responses:

Size & Comfort: Students desire larger, more adjustable desks to comfortably hold laptops, tablets, and study materials, especially during exams.
Stability & Functionality: Students have raised concerns about desk stability and functionality, including the need for charging ports to enhance the desk's utility.
Accessibility: Students suggest optimizing desk arrangement to accommodate for left-handed and right-handed individuals and improving overall accessibility for all body types.

Combining the above points and sponsor expectations, we devised the following requirements for our project:

Desktop does not extend more than 2” beyond outer edge of armrest when stowed away
50% more desktop surface area than original, far edge of desktop extends at least 20” from armrest
3.5” of adjustable armrest/desktop height
Can bear a 100 lb load applied on the desktop without deformation
Assembly meets budget constraint of $400 maximum

Design Features

20" wide folding hardwood desktop with aluminum hinges
Adjustable height aluminum armrest with 3 set height points to choose from
Swivel hinge connecting armrest and desktop, retaining the movement of the original desktop
Steel RHS (rectangular hollow section) tubing for armrest linkages
Indexing plungers to lock and unlock height adjustment
3d-printed handle to allow for easy plunger actuation

Documentation

Here is a link to our shared Google workspace for this project. This link will later be replaced to one for our final design binder.

Goals and Objectives