Teaching Inclusive Design - Case study: Escola Superior de Artes e Design

Renato Bispo, Product Designer, Teacher, Teacher, Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Portugal

This workshop wishes to give an account of the teaching experience within a Grad School of Arts and Design, with BFA and MFA degree programs, in Caldas da Rainha, a small, both historical and industrial town, 80km north of Lisbon, Portugal.

Hopefully, the account of such an example will contribute to the discussion on how we can include Inclusive Design (hereafter, ID) in the Design courses' curricula: specifically dedicated to its inherent problems, ID is, in this specific case, an optional course of the last Undergraduate program year at ESAD, set up in the 2001/2002 school year.

The strategy to introduce a specific ID class instead of a general dissemination throughout the whole range of the subjects is mainly associated to the practical aspect that the required competences were lacking within the faculty. Since it wouldn't be possible to focus on ID in diverse moments throughout the course, this option allows for a quicker integration in the study plan.

The advantages are more than a few: on the first hand, being a study subject of the last year, by then students are provided with solid knowledge and work methods which will allow them better technical autonomy in the realization of the projects, as well as more concrete and effectively applicable solutions in the real world.

Secondly, the choice of introducing ID as an option course is related directly with a smoothing attitude towards what we consider the first phase of its introduction: students that choose this option are more closely motivated to it.

Finally, being open to students from the several design areas, it becomes a multidisciplinary space in which cooperation and difference become intensification elements in the end results.

During these three years of ID teaching practice, it was easy to understand that its mere existence within the school permitted its progressive dissemination in other key moments of the curricula of the four type designs degrees. In a first phase of that dissemination, things ran somewhat automatically, through the cooperation with the Project courses of the last year program, but its integration was progressively done with other related subjects, such as ergonomics, anthropology, and design history and criticism, among others.

The course comprises 6 weekly hours for 30 weeks (school year). As for its methodology, it focus on the conception of research proposals, with which students will develop structuring competences that lead to the implementation of inclusive design in their own specific professional career prospects. The aim, thus, is the development of integrated solutions and not stigmatizing situations, solutions that may reach everyone, regardless of age, gender, health, skills, education level or cultural background.

To this effect, several exercises are made that endeavor to guarantee a deep understanding, knowledge and debate capacities, on the importance of planning for everyone, whether in ethical, deontological, technical or economic terms.

The commitment of the appointed users in the several phases of any given project is crucial: special needs identification, definition of the project's program, solution assessment. Students are guided in developing methodologies that allow them to assess and interpret data in functional time.

In what acting goals are concerned, it is hoped that its results will be felt in local industries, in the sense that ID is implemented effectively by companies and business that take up such challenge. Businesses openly interested in working with solutions that take in account equally human needs and environmental, technological, economic and productive requirements. Such a concern for more inclusive situations will also illustrate the fact that its advantages are not only related to its immediate users but also to the businesses themselves. Hence, as medium-term goals, we hope to establish partnerships with such economic and industrial agents.

In the debating part of this conference, this case study wishes to help deepening the definition of a study plan for a specific ID course, to promote the exchange of experiences in teaching methodologies and pedagogical exercises, as well as to present the results that were met.

Top