Empowering Creativity Through Children's Assistive Design Workshops with Orthorigami.

The tactile nature of smart materials, coupled with a maker approach and fabrication technology, is considered to empower children in creative design. We describe how children’s creativity was fostered through designing customized assistive devices using Orthorigami, made out of Shape Memory Polymer (SMP) using folding techniques [ 24 ]. Three day participatory making workshops are conducted with children ages 9-12 with a set of activities including: idea brainstorming, sketching, sculpting, laser-cutting, and making e-textiles. The study outlines what types of fabrication and crafting technology make the hands-on nature of SMP accessible to children for design of DIY Assistive Technology (AT). It also outlines, how using SMP fosters creativity and collaboration, and enables children to feel confident in their design capabilities.