SHPE Innovation Challenge
The Challenge.
As a part of the Society of Hispanic Engineers National Conference, I participated in a technology innovation challenge, where my group and I were given 3 days to create an innovative solution to an issue in the healthcare, manufacturing, or aviation industry.
Making airport training equitable.
After brainstorming various possible avenues we could take, my team and decided to address the current lack of empathy for disabled folks when going to airports. The process of riding a plane can be an extremely uncomfortable situation for someone who is disabled, and that is mostly due to the general lack of training of aircraft workers on how to understand the perspective of the disabled population. In order to help solve this, we decided to create an immersive, virtual reality training program that gives users different scenarios people with various disabilities might experience. While we weren’t able to create a virtual reality program in the short time we had, we create a prototype of a website with different examples of storylines that would be included in the program,
Mission Statement
“Current government trainings about disabilities are inadequate and disengaging. We want to change that, and we strive to have employees of industries like aviation and healthcare be invested in empathizing with people with disabilities in order to create more inclusive environments in areas of public service. It is one thing to learn about disabilities through watching videos and reading brochures, but by actually experiencing what it is like to go through everyday events via virtual reality, it will give people an experience they will never forget and lead to a deeper sense of understanding for the disabled population. “
—Virtuability