A 48-Hour Inclusive Design Challenge was organised by the Helen Hamlyn Centre as part of last autumn’s International Conference for Universal Design, held in Kyoto, Japan, 22-26 October 2006.
Five designers from member firms of the Design Business Association – all of them veterans of the full-scale version of the DBA Inclusive Design Challenge – were invited to lead five teams of in-house designers drawn from many of Japan’s leading companies, including Nissan, Toyota, Sony and Panasonic.
John Bateson from Corporate Edge, Adrian Berry from Factory Design, John Corcoran from Wire Design, Tim Fendley from AIG and Stuart May of PDD were the team leaders – and they had just 48 hours to develop a product, service, environment or communication that improves the lives of young disabled people by integrating them into mainstream society.
Not only did they have to grapple with a new culture and language, they also had to encourage young Japanese designers to abandon corporate loyalties and join team members from rival firms as part of a new cross-company inclusive design network.
Each team spent the first 24 hours on field research, brainstorming with a disabled user, defining issues, storyboarding and design development; the rest of the time was spent finalising the proposal and producing a six-minute presentation.
The resulting proposals were judged by delegates to be one of the highlights of the conference, which was organised by the International Association of Universal Design (IAUD).
The Best Design award was won by the team led by John Bateson for U-control – a customisable approach to tackling the intractable problems of using remote controls. The team led by Stuart May won the Best Presentation Award for a modular approach to fast food packaging.
Other proposals ranged from a Tag Wear system to help visually impaired people to shop for clothes to an Audio Sphere for profoundly deaf office workers.
A paper by Helen Hamlyn Centre researchers Rama Gheerawo and Jeremy Myerson won an award for Best Paper at the IAUD conference in Kyoto.
