"The physically disabled women have difficulties in entirely incorporating the social and cultural dimensions of shoes into their everyday life due to the lack of products and the bad quality of the existing ones. The few products...
more"The physically disabled women have difficulties in entirely incorporating the social and cultural dimensions of shoes into their everyday life due to the lack of products and the bad quality of the existing ones. The few products available in the Brazilian mass market cause embarrassment to their wearers as they result from designs which give priority to the functional aspects without taking the social and cultural dimensions into account.
In order to incorporate such dimensions, this present paper describes part of a study consisting of the development of the shoe design methodology, which would be able to allow both effective socio-cultural inclusion and improvement in the quality of life.
In addition to partial conclusions regarding such an investigation, this paper presents the ergonomic, aesthetical and symbolical aspects concerning the shoe design for the physically disabled women who live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with the purpose of responding how such aspects can provide the wearers with effective social cultural inclusion.
The qualitative methodology, which collected data from both primary and secondary sources, was applied. Phenomenological approach and semi-structured interviews were used to raise the main concepts, which would be able to allow both effective social cultural inclusion and improvement in the quality of life.
By analyzing the interviews, it could be concluded that the shoe design has to meet the safety and comfort criteria related to the ergonomic aspects, the aesthetics harmony and balance, as well as the sensuality and femininity concepts as symbolical aspects attributed to the shoe design by the wearers, so that the shoes can provide them with effective socio-cultural inclusion.
Keywords: Design for health; Shoe design; Physically disabled women
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