Speaker Scoping

The Convergence Accelerator program would like for the workshop to promote the brainstorming of candidate innovations in the area of rehabilitative and assistive technologies. From your perspective as a researcher, the idea is to communicate what is known, what is promising, and what needs more study. Target time is roughly 20 minutes.

A good sketch for the topic would be one that covers

• Your insights on how to design and develop assistive, rehabilitative, or accessible technologies,

• Your thoughts on compelling directions to take or essential things to consider when developing new technologies,

• Your speculation on what advances would open up new capabilities and enable a new class of technological solutions relative to those in existence today.

A little bit of your wisdom plus a little bit of what future innovations would really impact this field. The aim is to not discuss how the innovations could be realized, but what they look like or what they would enable. It is OK to be a little speculative or out there. At the same time, we’d like for your personal story or narrative to come through as you discuss these things. What about your journey has informed these insights?

The Convergence Accelerator program would like for the workshop to promote discussion on potentially impactful innovation gaps in relation to rehabilitative and assistive technologies. It is important to get the end-user’s perspective, whether that is from a person with disability or impairment, their caregiver, or a practitioner. Since the ideation workshop is somewhat open-ended, we are asking the speakers to provide scoping through the context of their talks. A suggested topic listing is:

• Your insights regarding what properties the most effective technologies have;

• What you feel designers sometimes miss; and

• What yet to be invented technologies might best help you realize your vision for daily life or facilitate what you wish to achieve?

• Or maybe there is technology that would work well, but the accessible interface is missing. What properties would it have?

There is freedom to balance these questions however best suits you. If there are special considerations that most people would not understand regarding daily challenges, please feel free to communicate them. If there are better questions we should be asking, feel free to pose yourself those questions and answer them as part of the talk. We’d also like to know a little bit about your life and experiences to get a sense for what informs your insights. Weaving this into the narrative would be greatly appreciated.

The Convergence Accelerator program is unique for NSF in that it emphasizes use-case inspired efforts that could lead to a successful demonstration or proof of concept. However, NSF would also like to ensure that the supported efforts are not duplicated elsewhere, either as part of basic, applied, or clinical research. As a representative from a funding agency or organization, we are interested in learning about the priorities of your agency, any emerging themes from the currently funded portfolio, and your understanding of the current trends. If there are directions that you feel are important but do not seem to fit the agency's mission, the talk would be a good opportunity to convey them to see if they would fit the Convergence Accelerator.

Part of the talk should serve to inform the scope of the brainstorming sessions in the workshop in terms of where there exists a funding gap, and part of the talk should provide perspectives on tantalizing directions that would benefit from convergence acceleration. The bullets below summarize the above text:

• What class of problems or solutions is usually supported by your agency?

• What are existing or emerging themes from the current research portfolio?

• What ideas or compelling efforts fall through the cracks that we might want to explore?

• What exciting capabilities or advances do you see enabled by the research you know of?

In covering the above, please do let us know more about your agency and your experiences so we can get a sense for what experiences inform the answers to the above.

The Convergence Accelerator program would like for the workshop to promote discussion on potentially impactful innovation gaps in relation to rehabilitative and assistive technologies. Importantly, the vision of the Convergence Accelerator is to ultimately provide proof of concept (though not necessarily technology readiness for commercial sale). From the industry perspective, we would like to learn about:

• Your insights regarding known best practice and/or major challenges to progress in your domain;

• Your thoughts on what the future of rehabilitative and assistive technologies could look like (what do you envision?); and

• Your conception of what present needs are essential to resolve in the next 2-3 years as a step towards that future.

Weaving your company’s product(s) into the narrative to help exemplify the above topics is encouraged. There is freedom to balance these three however best suits you. For fostering ideation, the intent should be to create a vision for what the innovations properties or enabling characteristics are more so than how they would be realized. You are also welcome to introduce a message we may have missed that you think would serve to promote robust discussion on what innovations to focus on or how to best characterize them.

The Convergence Accelerator program would like for the workshop to promote discussion on potentially impactful innovation opportunities in relation to rehabilitative and assistive technologies for people with disabilities or impairments. As an organization whose mission is to work with end-users of the target technology, you are familiar with their needs and existing challenges to empowered living.

A compelling talk on this front would improve our awareness of these issues and what opportunities may exist for a convergent team from academia and industry to address them through collaborative innovation. Covering the following elements would assist with the brainstorming process:

• Your insights regarding how technological advances have affected the population your organization serves;

• What are common problems or challenges that you or your population face?

• Where do you feel technology falls short and could improve?

• What considerations are overlooked when conceiving of some future technological innovation?

There is freedom to balance these three however best suits you, to explore a question that we should have posed but did not. Especially if it helps us to explore the potential innovation landscape. Please feel free to incorporate your background or your organization's mission into the talk as part of the story, to help paint a complete picture.