Organised by the Norwegian Design Council, 20-21 May 2010
The event
In 2008, the RCA Helen Hamlyn Centre was invited to run a 24 Hour Inclusive Design Challenge involving teams from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. It formed part of the first European Business Design Conference in the Scandinavian region and was organised by the Norwegian Design Council. Two years later and it was time for another Challenge.
Designers from the UK, Japan, Germany, Turkey and the US joined their Norwegian counterparts for the four teams that took part at the Norwegian Design Council's second European Business Conference on Inclusive Design - Innovation for All 2010. The teams had just 24 hours to come up with a solution, and were required to present it in six minutes to conference delegates, many of them inclusive design professionals.
The brief
The brief centred on digital technology and the teams were asked to use insights gained from their design partner to design an innovative and inclusive product, service, system or environment that employed digital technology and could enhance their domestic or working lives.
Working through the night, the teams were mentored by Julia Cassim, the Challenge facilitator and Michael Wolff, the UK government advisor on inclusive design who was also the Challenge patron.
The results
The results were decided by popular vote by the conference delegates. Team Heavy Metal led by Jørgen Solstad of Kadabra won the Best Idea prize for Sound Cloud, an innovative application that pairs a still image with a sound clip to allow you to travel through the landscape of images in your picture archive via sound and not vision alone. It was inspired by David Hole their design partner a heavy metal and opera fan who is blind but uses his camera extensively.
The Best Presentation prize went to Team Jukebox led by Marianne Støren Berg of KODE Design for Cupola - a cup that allows you to drink with dignity and without the risk of spillage, an issue for Ola Refsnes their energetic and entrepreneurial design partner .
Norway's Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, Audun Lysbakken, presented the prizes and commented in his speech that we need more and better design solutions in order to achieve a truly inclusive society. He quoted the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen: 'Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.' And said that designing with people for multiple contexts lies at the heart of inclusive design
All presentations can be viewed on the conference website.
