Age & Ablility Research Lab
Theme 4
With its people-centred focus, inclusive design has growing relevance to design practice and to industry. This research theme includes projects and initiatives to create effective knowledge transfer through publications, workshops, events and executive education. A key aim is to increase the 'real world' application of inclusive design in a way that benefits business and brings about lasting impact. A position paper by Prof Roger Coleman (co-founder of the Centre), delivered at the 12th Triennial Congress, International Ergonomics Association and the Human Factors Association of Canada, later in 1994, set out the case for inclusive design as the most appropriate response to population ageing.
Events
European Business Workshops on Inclusive Design
The Centre is the strategic partner for a series of conferences and workshops organised by Norwegian Design Council's Innovation for All programme. The conferences in 2008 and 2010 built up a network and established support for the Norwegian Government's Action Plan on Universal Design. The event in 2012 takes place in Oslo on 7-8 June and takes the form of executive education workshops. It aims to give designers and business people the knowledge, tools, learning and confidence to implement inclusive design within their organisation. The cost is heavily subsidised.
You can register for the conference here.
Workshops
The Challenge Workshops
The Challenge Workshops is a knowledge transfer programme focusing on techniques in inclusive design practice as a tool for innovation. It is a designer-friendly mechanism to transfer knowledge to design consulting firms and their industry clients about the inclusive design process and show how interaction with disabled people can become be a direct route to mainstream product and service innovation. The programme is lead by Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Julia Cassim.
Contact Julia Cassim here.
Executive Education Workshops
The Centre runs a series of inclusive design workshops as part of its executive education experience. These can last between one day and one week and aim to inspire and inform students, designers, educators and business professionals about the benefits of a people-centred approach. Sessions have recently been run for a number of business organisations including Samsung, Research In Motion and Living Labs Global. Workshops have also taken place in universities and design organisations across the globe from Canada to China.
Contact Rama Gheerawo here.
Projects
i~design
Between 2000 and 2010, three projects ran under the i~design banner, a collaboration between the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge with other design and academic partners brought in at different stages. Policy papers, academic publications, books, case studies write-ups, projects and web resources have all resulted.
More information here.
Resources
Innovating with People – the Business of Inclusive Design
This book, initiated and commissioned by the Norwegian Design Council, was the result of a two-year research and writing collaboration. It is an introduction to inclusive design written for a design and business audience in an 'easy to access' format, outlining history, benefits, processes, tools and case studies.
www.designingwithpeople.org
This web-based resource resulted from the i~design 3 project and was created to share ways to design with people. It is designed to support engagement with real people during the design process offering different resources for designers to use. You can meet real people with different capabilities and explore activities of daily living from different angles. A range of useful resources is available to assist designers in finding the right methods to conduct research in an effective and ethical way.
Case studies
We have gathered together a collection of 50 case studies as part of the i~design 2 research programme. Drawn from the research through design practice at the centre, 27 of these are the result of industry collaborations and 23 are from our design collaborations.
See industry collaborations case studies here
See design collaborations case studies here
British Standards: BS 7000-6
The centre has also played a leading role in writing the 2005 British Standard 7000-6, one of a series of design management standards. Aimed at large, medium and small organisations alike, it proposes a practical methodology for managing inclusive design at both organisational and project levels.
