It’s tough enough being a teacher these days. Now imagine facing a rowdy classroom while striving to overcome a disability. That’s a challenge faced by 1 in 8 teachers today, who deal with everything from learning differences to chronic illnesses, physical disabilities, and visual impairments.

To give those teachers some help, Dallas-based architecture firm Corgan has been awarded a $30,000 research grant from the American Society of Interior Designers Foundation to study the experiences of teachers with disabilities. That diverse community has had limited representation in existing research, Corgan said.

Hugo—Corgan’s research and innovation incubator—will partner with Corgan’s education sector on research aimed at “uncovering actionable insights to promote inclusive design strategies for schools.”

Corgan’s research project is called “Experiencing Evidence to Build Empathy: Improving Spatial Design Through Simulated Experience Using a Gerontological Suit.” The study aims to reduce this “empathy gap” by observing and simulating the impact of a range of disabilities—from the physical tosensory, temporary, chronic, visible, and invisible—on educators’ experiences in the built environment. The study will also evaluate how design can be used to relieve these pain points, with the resulting insights used to help shape inclusive design in schools.

Wearing a GERT suit at a North Texas elementary school

[Photo: Business Wire]

Over a span of eight months, the Corgan research team will approach the study in five phases: outreach, user experience, simulation, analysis, and design development. A research team will use a gerontologic (GERT) suit, which uses goggles, earmuffs, weighted clothing, thick gloves, and other devices to simulates limitations common in aging and conditions like temporary injury, pregnancy, sensory sensitivity, arthritis, and diabetes.

Study taking place at Corgan-designed North Texas school

While wearing the GERT suit, researchers will conduct an experiment at a Corgan-designed elementary school in North Texas.”By wearing the GERT suit, educators without disabilities will be able to provide feedback and help identify opportunities for targeted design interventions to better support their peers,” Corgan said.

Corgan will then publish an open-source design guidebook informed by the research insights, with the research team hosting an interactive workshop this fall exploring “empathetic design solutions.”

“Learning from teachers and their unique needs in learning environments lets us make design decisions that are more thoughtful and personalized for all end-users,” Melissa Hoelting, senior design research lead of Corgan-Hugo, said in a statement. “We’e grateful for support from the ASID Foundation to allow us to dig into research that will guide us towards scalable design solutions that resonate with teachers’ real-life needs.”

The ASID Foundation grant program recognizes outstanding research projects that will be developed into educational resources to support the interior design practice, Corgan noted. In 2023, the foundation called for research on “designing humanizing environments for imperiled people, and activating diversity, equity, and inclusion in design solutions.”

Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.

Sign up to keep your eye on what’s new and next in Dallas-Fort Worth, every day.