Research in design education recently showed an increasing interest the confrontation of engineering student and the real design activities. Although many student contributions to the industrial projects remained superficially and limited because of complexity and confidentiality issues, the user centric design activity proposes a new way to overcome the distance. The present paper is the result of our research and education program which aimed to provide the opportunity of student participation in the day to day engineering design activities in the context of design for the handicapped children. The specified context thought the student how to follow a generic design approach and how to face and over come the problems caused by having handicapped children who can not explain their needs, or even evaluate the designed prototype.