Designers and manufacturers’ perspectives on inclusive/universal design

Inclusive design in the U.K. and its U.S. counterpart, universal design, present opportunities and challenges to industry. In order to encourage manufacturers and design companies to adopt more inclusive design practices, the research has been carried out to gain an understanding of why and how companies adopt inclusive design practices, what are the barriers when implementing them and what are the key strategies for facilitating inclusive/universal design in an industrial context. Based on interviews with a number of U.K. design consultancies and an investigation among manufacturers in the U.S., a comparison between U.K. consultant designers and U.S. consumer product manufacturers’ perspectives on inclusive/universal design was made. It was found that designers are reluctant to sacrifice the aesthetics of the brand to design for inclusion, but nevertheless would like to have practical tools to help them develop more inclusive solutions. For manufacturers, the key motivation for such practices is that of government regulation and legislation requiring the accessibility of products and services

Stress and exclusion: principles and tools for inclusive design

The Journey Stress Calculator is one of the tools that Loughborough University is developing as part of the Accessibility and User Needs in Transport for Sustainable Urban Environments (AUNT-SUE) project. The ambitious aim of this tool is to model the psychological stress that 100 people would experience during any public transport journey. Assessing whole journey accessibility in this way has been born out of a fresh perspective on the causes of social exclusion. This paper provides an introduction to psychological stress theory and proposes two key principles. The exclusion transaction explains how individual instances of exclusion occur, whilst stressor elimination is the mechanism that reduces exclusion. The potential benefits of understanding exclusion in this way are discussed and it is suggested that the aim of inclusive design should be the elimination of stressors that associated with products and systems. Practical implementation of this approach would rely on the availability of techniques that can be easily integrated into design and policy making processes. The Journey Stress Calculator is one example of how this may be achieved, but simpler and more generally applicable tools are also proposed

Universal Instructional Design: Tools for Creating an Inclusive Educational Experience

The number of students with disabilities on college campuses in the United States is growing. To address the needs of these students, all campus community members must evaluate the degree to which the campus environment and social climate are welcoming to students with disabilities. The barriers students with disabilities face can be seen in the classroom, academic and administrative buildings, and in relationships among campus community members. Universal instructional design is an approach to address the needs of students with disabilities and deconstruct prejudice against them

Improving inclusive design practice - transferring knowledge from sports design practice

Despite the existence of many design tools to educate and assist the designer in implementing inclusive design, there is still a lack of inclusive design uptake in industry. The client is often cited as a barrier to inclusive design uptake, therefore it is important that this issue is addressed if inclusive design uptake is to be increased. Sports design is a highly user focused discipline, therefore it is anticipated that there is scope for inclusive design to learn from this user centred discipline. This research aims to investigate the potential of applying the sports design process within an inclusive design context to increase inclusive design uptake in industry. The paper reports on a practical study, which interviewed practicing industry designers and designers from a UK centre specialising in inclusive design. The outcome is a set of recommendations from designers on how the sports design process model can be developed to facilitate inclusive design uptake in industry

Understanding inclusive design education

There is a need for responsible engineering design to accommodate the diverse user requirements that come with the global phenomenon of population ageing. Inclusive design is a design philosophy that considers the needs of a wide diversity of users within the design process, therefore is an approach that can address these diverse user requirements. However, uptake of inclusive design in industry has been limited, with designer awareness of the approach and its associated methods and tools noted as barriers to the uptake of the approach. This research aims to understand the current approach to ID education within UK Higher Education Institutions, utilising interviews with design educators and a student survey. The study concluded that the teaching of inclusive design varied between institutions with some conflicting responses from academics and students relating to methods, tools and processes taught. This study recommends that greater transparency should be encouraged between universities to encourage the development of a cohesive ID education strategy, in addition to the development of a framework to aid the implementation of appropriate ID methods and tools within the design process

Technology Changes Everything: Inclusive Tech and Jobs for a Diverse Workforce: Pierce Memorial Foundation Report

This document serves as the final report to the Pierce Foundation for funding to support the design and implementation of a 1.5-day Forum entitled “Technology Changes Everything: A Forum on Inclusive Tech and Jobs for a Diverse Workforce” conducted in NYC on October 26-27, 2017 at Baruch College. The conference idea was conceived to address the need to raise awareness across a number of distinct areas where technology is currently impacting employment outcomes for people with disabilities. The topics ranged from one as straightforward as the critical need for attention on equitably integrating individuals with disabilities into the rapidly exploding tech sector workforce, to the much more nuanced and complex application of algorithmic screening and job-matching tools increasingly used in online job applications and selection processes. Other topics focused on were equitable access to entrepreneurship opportunities, inclusive design in technology-based products and services, and the growing targeted focus of technology sector and tech-intensive industries in affirmative recruitment and hiring of individuals with Autism

A validation study on the challenges that architectural design practitioners face when designing inclusively.

Inclusive Design has been widely promoted in the product, engineering and user experience design fields. Notwithstanding the educational effort developed by scholars, practitioners and institutions, Inclusive Design has not flourished in architectural design practice, often being associated with design for disability. This study, which spans the disciplines of behavioural science, ergonomics and the social sciences of architecture, validates early-stage results on the challenges that architectural design practitioners face when designing inclusively. A questionnaire was conducted with 114 architectural design practitioners with knowledge and experience of Inclusive Design. The results highlighted the influence practitioners have in advocating for Inclusive Design among different stakeholders, and the need for tools which support the design and post-design phases for buildings that guarantee inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement N°846284

Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heterogenous students to collaborate. Such prevailing problems of access and interaction are central concerns of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an engineering paradigm for inclusive participation in cultural praxis like mathematics. Rather than directly adapt existing artifacts for broader usage, UDL process begins by interrogating the praxis these artifacts serve and then radically re-imagining tools and ecologies to optimize usability for all learners. We argue for the utility of two additional frameworks to enhance UDL efforts: (a) enactivism, a cognitive-sciences view of learning, knowing, and reasoning as modal activity; and (b) ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), which investigates participants’ multimodal methods for coordinating action and meaning. Combined, these approaches help frame the design and evaluation of opportunities for heterogeneous students to learn mathematics collaboratively in inclusive classrooms by coordinating perceptuo-motor solutions to joint manipulation problems. We contextualize the thesis with a proposal for a pluralist design for proportions, in which a pair of students jointly operate an interactive technological device

Innovating With People - The Business of Inclusive Design

This book brings together the complex academic knowledge that exists in inclusive design and presents it in an accessible format suitable for trade and industry. Co-written with Onny Eikhaug of the Norwegian Design Council, it is a ‘first of its kind’ publication aimed at taking the inclusive design research process into the industrial arena and effecting real knowledge exchange. The research combined academic thinking with market case studies and business evidence for the innovation value of inclusive design. It outlines eight inclusive design activities that could be added to any business/innovation process and nine basic tools for conducting people-centred research. The book addresses both the need to take inclusive design research into the business arena and the Norwegian Government’s ambitious targets for inclusive design by 2025. It builds on practical inclusive design research with Norwegian companies and a series of knowledge-transfer events, most notably two conferences in 2008 and 2010 entitled the ‘European Business Conference on Inclusive Design’. The publication has provided a platform for Gheerawo to undertake further research on the business value and application of inclusive design, including knowledge-exchange workshops, executive education and projects with BlackBerry, Samsung, NorDan, Kinnarps, Stannah and the London Creative and Digital Fusion. He also ran an executive education workshop in Oslo with Eikhaug on inclusive design in 2012, based on the methods and frameworks in the book, with 130 delegates from 14 countries; he organised and spoke at the ‘Ageing and Design – Global Business Perspectives’ conference in Hong Kong in 2012, resulting in a partnership with the Institute of Design Knowledge, Hong Kong Design Centre; gave presentations globally in cities including Moscow, Hamamatsu, Salamanca, Hong Kong and Prague; and was appointed guest editor on the subject for two journals: Design Philosophy Papers in 2011 and The Design Journal in 2013

Tools for User-Centred Design

User-Centred Design aims to involve users at all stages of the design of products. Some of the basic principles are briefly considered together with their relationship to ergonomics. Tools for the application of User-Centred Design are discussed including specific tools such as digital human modelling, personas, manikin characters, inclusive design and human behavioural modelling