The Challenge Workshops

Department of Systems Engineering, Kyoto University

Kyoto, Japan, 1-3 March 2006

The Context

Kyoto University was founded in 1897, the second university to be established in Japan, and in the highly competitive educational climate trains the country's ruling elite.

The workshop was organised by the Symbiotic Systems Laboratory in the Department of Systems Science whose research focus is the relationships between humans, artefacts and their environments and the development of systems design methodologies.

The lab collaborated with Tanpopo no Ie (Dandelion House) a national disability arts network which runs a residential centre with studios in Nara, the ancient capital of Japan.

Universal Design is well-established as a concept in Japan as evidenced by the activities of the International Association of Universal Design a 120 member-strong network of Japan's leading companies. Many companies have in-house Universal Design divisions and do extensive user testing and research to ensure that their products are inclusive. Leading names such as Panasonic and Toyota showcase them in permanent exhibition spaces in Tokyo.

With the business rationale based firmly on the demographics of ageing populations, the challenge for Japanese manufacturers is to widen the appeal of universally designed products which are commonly viewed as being for older or disabled people alone. The aim of the workshop was to show how one could combine ergonomics with mainstream styling to develop desirable and inclusive products that would appeal to a broader spectrum of the population.

The Participants

Graduate systems engineering students from Kyoto University, design, media and social welfare studies students from other universities in the Kansai and Chubu area, disabled individuals from the Tanpopo no Ye network and one employee of a small business.

The Framework

The workshop followed the pattern devised for the Holon workshop with the crucial difference being the involvement of disabled users. Each of the four teams spent half a day shadowing their assigned subject - a visually impaired housewife, two young male wheelchair users and a visually impaired couple in their 50s. They worked until late at night to develop their design ideas for presentation on the final day to faculty staff and members of the public.

The Results

The four projects were as varied as those by their Israeli counterparts. One team proposed a new easy-to-open packaging design for vacuum sealed 'natto' - the fermented soy beans that are a cheap and popular item of the Japanese diet. The second group devised a new system for making individual cups of filtered coffee while the third looked at the problems visually impaired people had in applying toothpaste. 'Tooth Candy' was their answer - solidified toothpaste which could be popped in the mouth and was as ideal for people on the move as the visually impaired person who had inspired it.

The winning team had worked with a young wheelchair user who was an avid visitor to games centres and was a fan of 'puri-kura' - (literally 'print club') which he exchanged as visual autograph equivalents with his friends. These arcade booths deliver sticker sheets of 16 miniature photographs of the subject posed against a variety of CG backgrounds and even allow effects to be created by light pens or superimposed images. It is a popular sub-culture among young people in Japan. The team devised a way in which this system could be translated into sound so that instead of images, friends could exchange sounds using existing mobile phone technology. The judging panel felt that this was a unique way of promoting social inclusion and having fun.