Name: Sachit Shyam

Guide: Prof. Mandar Rane

Course: Visual Communication

Credits: User studies by Apoorva Savant, NeuroGen Brain & Spine Institute

Communication Assistance Solutions

Imagine one day you wake up from your sleep and try to get out of the bed but are unable to lift your legs, you try to move your arms but in vain, you try to call out for help but you can’t move your lips…
This is how an MND (Motor Neuron Disease) ALS patient feels like.
MND progressively affects the motor neuron sensors responsible for sending signals from spinal cord to muscles. Task as simple as talking and swallowing becomes impossible. Patients have to depend on their families/caregivers for their daily needs.
My role as a communication designer is to study and categorise the needs of patients and to design a communication system for the patient and the caregiver/family member. Iconography and standardisation of the visual language plays an important role in this project as it would help to build an overall system.

These icons are just a small part of the whole solutions. Visual cue cards and Icon chart would serve the same purpose but in different context depending on the patient. The visual cue cards could be used in the home environment and the icon chart can be used by the doctors in the hospitals while the patients were attending the therapy sessions. Along with this a training programme can be set up to train and provide caretakers to the families of patients. This would not only give the community a structure but recruiting and training new people would also become easier.