Designing inclusive environments is essential for an equitable society. A main challenge for designers is possessing the skills to confidently explore, understand, and design for the specific needs of diverse groups of people who face injustice and discrimination. Michele Wells’s Theater for Humanity provides an innovative approach to experience the needs of people from diverse perspectives and re-design these situations with the techniques of theater. Design for Humanity’s purpose is to develop engineers who possess the skills to create products that lead to a more equitable and just society.
Elmina Slave Castle
Prison
Using virtual reality in prison to improve reentry.
Prisoner reentry is an overwhelming process that taxes the human nervous system because a single individual must immediately develop the habits necessary to overcome prisonization so that they can find housing, employment, and rebuild relationships, all while not reoffending maintaining emotional stability and avoiding confrontation with police.
If virtual reality can serve as an intervention by addressing prisonization while providing an incarcerated person with training that leads to a desirable career, then people who are incarcerated can develop the internal state and daily habits that would facilitate their successful reentry to society after the end of their sentence prepared to advance their career.