The annotated case studies below are well-suited to Design courses across the College of Design. Review the options available for your class, and don’t hesitate to recommend a new case study to SLS! Let us know of a case study pertinent to your discipline, or click here to create your own.

Nine Franchises for the Hollowell Parkway Corridor, Atlanta, GA, (GT-City & Regional Planning)

This literature review and case study considers franchising as a tipping point strategy for local economic development for disadvantaged communities located along the Hollowell Parkway on Atlanta’s west side.  These communities have failed to participate in the economic prosperity currently being experienced in the greater Atlanta area.  This research project conducted a background analysis and literature review of the franchise industry, identifying the arguments that support a franchise strategy, as well as some arguments against.  Several public and private economic development tools have been identified, which can enable local, eager, but inexperienced entrepreneurs to engage in business within their local communities, using a structured, tested, and proven business methodology.

Partnership Against Domestic Violence Facility Design (GT-Design)

This case study, created by Georgia Tech students in Prof. Frank Wickstead’s College of Design course, and in coalition with the Atlanta Partnership Against Domestic Violence (PADV), describes the students’ attempts to design facilities for PADV. As the students assert, their primary goal was, “to ensure that our recommendations were driven by the needs of the stakeholders and not by our own thoughts and assumptions. At the center of this, we made sure that each decisions would positively impact the one stakeholder at the center of it all - the guest. How could our designs make a more sustainable environment for her? How could they provide greater security or functionality? How could the design of a built environment empower her to become the best and healthiest version of herself? How could design help foster greater community and connectivity?”

Portable Pediatric Parallel Bars (GT-Design)

This student-produced case study takes as its primary objective, “to design and build a set of affordable, adjustable, and portable pediatric parallel bars for child patients aged 2-10 years. These portable parallel bars will allow travelling physical therapists (PTs) to transport their own parallel bars to the patient’s home […] Portable parallel bars are needed to allow outpatients […] comfort in sturdiness and consistency in their homes. Conversations with current PTs revealed that only two solutions exist to address the need for portable parallel bar therapy.”

UTransfer (GT-Design)

This case study was produced by College of Design students for their Design Capstone course. The students designed a device called UTransfer, its purpose being “to provide a level of aid for individuals, particularly the elderly, who find it hard to enter and exit a vehicle.” The students found that “current products consisted of cheap devices that would only aid a part of the ingress and egress, or very expensive custom chair installations […].” Partnering with an organization called URise, the students designed “a mid-priced product that could fully aid the entire process of entering and exiting a vehicle.”