DBA Design Challenge 2002

Innovation in Inclusive Design

10 December, Royal College of Art

It was standing room only at the awards ceremony of the third DBA Design Challenge, organised by the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre. The audience's enthusiastic response to the high quality of the projects presented was one measure of the growing influence of the event in the worlds of design, disability, business and academia.

Robin Hutchinson

Speakers at the event included Robin Hutchinson, Head of Communications of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and Rob Williams of Barclays Bank. Both spoke of the importance of ensuring that innovative initiatives of this nature should be long-term and take place within the framework of ongoing programmes.

The five projects spanned the world of packaging, communications, transport, retail environments and the new area of 'smart wearables' - the intersection between functional fashion, 'smart' materials and embedded technology.
 

Rob Williams

• C / Coley Porter Bell
• Shop Sense / Kinneir Dufort & Appliance Studio
• Smart Wearables / Pearlfisher
• I-connect / PSD:Fitch
• Handle with Care / Sieberthead

Throughout the design process, the teams were mentored by the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, working closely with groups of expert users with disabilities. Coley Porter Bell won the Inclusive Design prize for their 'c' system - a 'smart' clothing tag system for people with visual impairments. The judging panel liked the simplicity of the idea, its educational and commercial possibilities and its potential as an affordable tactile language that could forge a new retail standard for any product involving colour.

Download a transcript of the event (80KB Rich Text File)