Towards designing inclusion: insights from a user data collection study in China

Userdatahasbeenidentifiedasoneoftheimportantknowledge basesfor inclusive design. In order to explore the influential factors that may affect the reliability of data and then build up a more effective and efficient data-collection framework,wecarriedoutanexperimentalstudy tocollectdata fromolderpeople (aged 50~70) in China, which included users’ capability, psychological and socialcultural attributes. Users’ actual product interaction performance was also investigated.Threeissueswerediscussedbasedontheoutcome ofdataanalyses:a) mood states have significant effects on respondent’s self-reporting results; b) compared withmaximumsettings,peoplemayhaveawider rangeofperceptionsof “comfortable” settings and it is possible to predict the performance in a “comfortable” settingbasedon“maximum” data; c)social-cultural variables,vision, hearing,dexterity,cognitionandpsychologicalcharacteristics canpredictsuccessful product interaction tasks at different levels by using multiple logistic regression analysis

Capturing architects’ designerly ways of knowing about users: Exploring an ethnographic research approach

Transferring knowledge about diverse users’ experiences from research into architectural design practice is not straightforward. Effective knowledge transfer requires taking into account architects’ design practice. This paper explores a research approach to gain insight into architects’ designerly ways of knowing about users. It discusses why an ethnographic research approach offers a means to study a culture of practice such as architectural design practice. A fieldwork account from a pilot study in an architecture firm provides insight into the experiential issues architects deal with. It illustrates how fieldwork techniques can be applied to map the socio-material aspects (e.g., different stakeholders and design materials) that mediate knowledge about users. Exploiting these aspects of architectural design practice is expected to open new ways of thinking about informing architects about users’ experiences. For instance, there lies an opportunity in engaging architects’ creative representational skills, which challenges architects’ and researchers’ roles in knowledge transfer

Larger Chinese text spacing and size: effects on older users' experience

With declining vision ability, character spacing and size on smartphones designed for the general population are not accessible for older adults. This study aimed to explore how larger Chinese character spacing and size affect older adults’ user experience (UX). An orthogonal experiment was conducted. The optimal range of font size (FS), word spacing (WS) and line spacing (LS) were proposed utilising subjective evaluations to investigate the correlation of eye movement data with participants perceived UX. The results showed that improvement in different aspects of UX varied when FS, WS and LS increased. Overall, participants preferred larger FS, WS and LS, however, the larger FS, WS and LS values are more likely to cause errors and slower reading speed. These results suggest that the distinct combination of size and spacing depends on the motivation, needs and situation of older people when reading on a smartphone. These findings will help designers to provide better design for the older people

Designing “little worlds” in Walnut Park: How architects adopted an ethnographic case study on living with dementia

Understanding future users is recognised to be essential in design, yet also challenging. Often architects have no direct access to the experiences of others, like people with dementia. Case studies have been suggested as an adequate format to inform designers. This paper investigates the role of an ethnographic case study about a person living with dementia, as provided to an architectural firm designing a residential care facility. Interviews with the architects and an analysis of design materials reveal how they incorporated the case study in their ongoing design. Results indicate that the case study offered insight into users’ daily life and facilitated architects’ concept development. Architects’ resulting concept proved valuable to frame design decisions, while its visualisation played a significant role in internal and external communication. The study contributes to untangling important aspects in informing architects about future users and raises questions regarding researchers’ and designers’ roles in transferring knowledge

A hybrid patient-specific biomechanical model based image registration method for the motion estimation of lungs

This paper presents a new hybrid biomechanical model-based non-rigid image registration method for lung motion estimation. In the proposed method, a patient-specific biomechanical modelling process captures major physically realistic deformations with explicit physical modelling of sliding motion, whilst a subsequent non-rigid image registration process compensates for small residuals. The proposed algorithm was evaluated with 10 4D CT datasets of lung cancer patients. The target registration error (TRE), defined as the Euclidean distance of landmark pairs, was significantly lower with the proposed method (TRE = 1.37 mm) than with biomechanical modelling (TRE = 3.81 mm) and intensity-based image registration without specific considerations for sliding motion (TRE = 4.57 mm). The proposed method achieved a comparable accuracy as several recently developed intensity-based registration algorithms with sliding handling on the same datasets. A detailed comparison on the distributions of TREs with three non-rigid intensity-based algorithms showed that the proposed method performed especially well on estimating the displacement field of lung surface regions (mean TRE = 1.33 mm, maximum TRE = 5.3 mm). The effects of biomechanical model parameters (such as Poisson’s ratio, friction and tissue heterogeneity) on displacement estimation were investigated. The potential of the algorithm in optimising biomechanical models of lungs through analysing the pattern of displacement compensation from the image registration process has also been demonstrated

Ageing and physical activity: a preliminary literature review

Ageing is a prominent challenge facing the world. Increasing physical activity among older adults not only helps maintain and improve their health, but also has positive economic and social implications. Since 2007, research on physical activity among older adults has increased significantly, suggesting an increased reseach interest in the field. This paper reviewed relevant publication (from Web of Science Core Collection and Medline) over the period 1999-2019. The visualisation software CiteSpace was used to mine data, map information, and reveal trends. Important areas for further reseach were identified

New design heuristics in the digital era

In the digital era, products’ forms do not necessarily follow their function. Design fixation may happen when a designer attempts to generate diverse concepts. New design heuristics for digital design were extracted to support designers in the early conceptual design stage. Ten design heuristics were extracted from 998 RedDot award-winning concept designs (2013-2017) through a five-step process. It was preliminarily tested by four practitioners and proved to have positively influenced their conceptual design. </div

Incorporating "care" into design education through games

“Universal Care” can be regarded as the ultimate goal for Universal Design. It implies that design takes care of not only the user, but also the environment, and all other people directly or indirectly influenced by the design. However, “care” as a concept is not necessarily recognised or incorporated in existing design education.In order to understand what “care” means for design education, the authors have developed two models: the “care” model addresses an Interior Design context, mapping the designer, the client/design, and the environment, to care-giving and care-receiving roles; the “relations” model shows the overlapping between Client, Design object, Design and Environment, for a product design context.Subsequently two case studies (“My home” and “VI Boccia grid”) were presented to illustrate how the models could inform Interior Design education and accessible product design innovation. The game “My home” enabled the Interior Design students to have a detailed conversation about the client’s needs and family relations, thus helping raise the designer’s awareness of care. The “VI Boccia grid” is a game designed for visually impaired people, and the whole design process highlighted issues critical for the success of accessible product development. Design educators, students, design researchers and practitioners can learn from the two models and the two case studies when applying “care” in their design process.<br

New design heuristics compared with existing ones

Design Heuristics (DHS) as a tool helps boost designers’ creativity in the early design phases. Since the middle of the 20th Century, different DHS have been developed, e.g. general ones such as SCAMPER and 77 Design Heuristics; and specific ones such as DHSfX (design for one-handed use) and DHS for additive manufacturing. With rapid technological developments, an increasing number of products now incorporate technological platforms and services. There is a lack of new DHS relating to such service-based information products. Based on RedDot Concept Design Award entries (2013-2017), we have extracted ten DHS that focus on service-based information products. In this study, we compared our newly derived DHS with existing design heuristics and discovered that although some of our DHS overlapped with existing ones, the new DHS10 were more specific and useful for digital solutions. The preliminary evaluation of the new DHS suggested its potential in helping generate concepts in the early design phase

From accessibility to experience: Opportunities for inclusive design in architectural practice

This paper presents an explorative study on the relation between architectural practice and inclusive design. It is hypothesised that the limited adoption of inclusive design in architectural practice may relate to a particular mind-set and/or a lack of information formats that are compatible with (architectural) design practice. The first part of this paper reviews literature from various design disciplines on potential factors that influence the adoption of inclusive design. Influences are sought in the direction of the international context of inclusive design, the limitations of current information formats, and the specific context of architectural practice. The second part of this paper reports empirical research results from 20 interviews with different stakeholders in architectural practice in Flanders, Belgium. The aim of these interviews was to investigate current perceptions, sources and tools, as well as perceived barriers and motivations for inclusive design. Combining these findings with those from other design disciplines reveals opportunities for a closer relation between architectural practice and inclusive design. It was found that a focus on accessibility legislation – both in terms of content and format– inhibits a potential broader understanding of user experience, which could correspond more to architects’ way of working