Inclusive Design in Practice: Working with the Design and Disability Communities
Julia Cassim, The Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, Royal College of Art, UK
Nina Warbuton, Alloy Total Product Design, UK
Adrian Berry, Factory Design, UK
Scope and Rationale
In an ideal world inclusive products and services would be the norm and not the exception. Close collaboration between users, designers and makers from project inception to completion would be cited by all parties as the key to success.
In the real world this is not so. Designers complain that they lack the tools and necessary information to pitch inclusive scenarios to their clients. What is available is often couched in language they do not understand and formats they find hard to navigate. Where user input is a feature of the project, the prescriptive and unrepresentative nature of commercial focus groups fails to generate the kind of stimulus designers need to think 'out of the box'.
Manufacturers cite time and cost constraints and a similar lack of appropriate information on the business case for inclusive design, compelling though it may be. They may be aware of the demographic realities of ageing world populations, the associated pensions crisis and the potential market but have trouble visualizing precisely how inclusivity can be applied to their existing or future product or service range or indeed its relevance to product innovation. Meanwhile, the 'critical' users who could provide the creative stimulus designers need remain out of the loop.
Collaborators
In response to this situation, the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre (HHRC) has collaborated annually since 2000 with the major professional organisation for the design industry in the UK, the Design in Business Association (DBA) in creating, managing and delivering the DBA Design Challenge.
DBA Design Challenge
The Design Challenge takes place over a period of four months and culminates in the presentation of the resulting prototypes or scenarios at a public event at the Royal College of Art. A design brief set by the HHRC is circulated to DBA firms who are invited to a launch evening at the RCA. Presentations are made on previous projects, the overall context of inclusive design and purpose of the project are described. The scope of their project is discussed with each team and a customized 'toolkit' devised. These provide a conceptual framework for inclusive design; demographic, ergonomic and project specific data; case studies; user-research methodologies; appropriate website links and contacts with experts in the area under study whom they can consult at all stages of design development.
With the context established, a two-hour project-specific forum of 'critical' users is organised for each design team to fully explore the practical inclusive issues within their project scope. A key part of the process is to ensure that the design team has been prepared to radically reshape their project as a result of dialogue with critical users at the user forum, and to incorporate feedback into the strategic development of their final prototype. Three case studies detailing the direct effect of this user input into the final design solution are given below - the design for a park, a 'smart' clothing tag system and a saucepan.
Case Study 1 - Inspiration Park
Leading UK design consultancy Imagination, winners of the DBA Challenge in 2001, created Inspiration Park, an all-weather concept developed with the expert input of visually, cognitively and mobility impaired users (see Figure 1 below). The park has a wealth of details - high-sided banks to cut traffic noise, a roofed area, water features, and incorporates potential branding and sponsorship ideas to make it commercially viable.
Figure 1: Inspiration Park - waist-high island domes
with high contrast colour planting.
[Figure 1 Description]
Parks are natural environments that offer relaxation and escape from the daily grind. But the visually impaired users who advised Imagination told a different story. To them, parks were demanding spaces full of danger and unforeseen threat with none of the essential navigational and sound cues the built environment can supply.
Working with a space the size of London's Russell Square, Imagination's designers sought to provide a design concept that would inspire and include. Imagination's design solution included:
- a transparent roof to keep out the rain, catch the sun, yet allow rainwater to be channelled to a central water feature
- wide welcoming entrances
- a defined boundary to act as a sound barrier
- a clear navigation system to allow safe, independent exploration
- an information point and tactile maps at entrances to guide visitors
- pathways of tough compound rubber to provide a safe and comfortable surface
The space was divided into four separate areas for water, art, nature and play, radiating out from a central hub (see Figure 2 below). This was the park's centrepiece, a meeting place for all visitors where a table-top pond provides a relaxing soundscape. On rainy days, water funnels down through the circular opening in the transparent roof and collects on the pond. Large text scrollers carry poems, news and information with audio output updated daily, providing sponsorship opportunities.
Figure 2: The floating lake - a central feature of the park.
[Figure 2 Description]
Case Study 2 - 'c' System
The Design Award in 2002 went to Coley Porter Bell, a major UK graphics and branding consultancy, for its 'c' system - a 'smart' clothing tag system for people with visual impairments, to allow them to make independent choices.
Making decisions about buying clothes is largely dependent on sight and there is no sophisticated and systematic way to enable people with severe sight impairments in the UK to distinguish the colour of clothing and other products.
Coley Porter Bell looked at the swing tag, a disposable object with limited functional purpose to the consumer, and transformed it into a valuable interface that permits independent shopping and mixing and matching one's wardrobe through connection with the world of colour (see Figure 3 below).
Figure 3: The swing tag with its tactile colour and size coding for clothing.
The 'c' clothing tag system consists of a tactile language of shapes representing colour and size to be used on the swing tag and a permanent silk label attached to the garment, with a bar code reader to give additional product information (see Figure 4 below). |
Figure 4: The silk label component with the bar code scanner.
[Figure 4 Description]
The language enables visually impaired users to identify over 60 colours by learning 16 tactile shapes. Each core shape is enclosed in a square with a raised keyline and represents a colour. The inner shape is further subdivided in four, creating four shades of decreasing saturation within one colour range, all with distinct colour names. When the shape is ribbed, this indicates that the garment is patterned; when left plain, the colour is solid (see Figure 5 below).
Figure 5: A chart of the 59 tactile codes for colour devised for the 'c system'.
[Figure 5 Description]
In-store, a 'c' tag can be found on the garment alongside the other conventional pricing labels. On one side of the 'c' tag, the relevant shape is displayed with a sizing system of five raised circles symbolising whether a garment is extra small, extra large or somewhere in-between. On the reverse is a barcode providing more detailed information when it is scanned with the 'c' reader. A permanent silk 'c' label with the tactile shape repeated is sewn into the garment enabling long-term identification - in the store, in the wardrobe or the laundry basket. The important user input to the project was provided by expert visually impaired users drawn from the creative industries.
Case Study 3 - Factory Wares
Factory Design, a London based product design consultancy won joint first prize in 2003 for Factory Wares, a project that returned to first principles to design an inclusive, commercially sensitive and aesthetically pleasing saucepan.
The users with severe arthritis who advised Factory Design all loved cooking but their moment of truth came once the dish was ready and had to be lifted from the heat. It was then that the weight and design of the saucepan increased the pain of their condition and led to accidents. Nine million people of all ages in the UK are affected by arthritis and every one of them needs to eat. Factory Design's challenge was to create a saucepan that would transform the pain of their cooking experience to one where pleasure was uppermost. From speaking to user groups, Factory found that the design had to address the following issues:
- Need for a built-in colander
- Many saucepans have a painful split in the handle
- Radius at bottom of pan too tight, making it difficult to clean
- Weight, handling, balance and draining.
The resulting design was a universal pan size to accommodate different cooking methods with a traditional, round shape but with conical sides for easy pouring and a large radius to facilitate cleaning. It had an aluminium body for lightness, non-stick interior and copper bottom to enhance cooking and cleaning and an integrated aluminium colander for drainage. The ergonomic two-part handle was longer with a fuller cross-section to assist grip, especially when full and was angled downwards to allow for greater stability. The oval comfort platform at the end of the handle shifts the weight of the pan to the arm from a single point at the wrist, ensuring greater balance, safety and less pain whilst a secondary, hooped handle on the opposite side allows two-handed use (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: A side view of the Factory Wares saucepan showing its characteristic handle.
[Figure 6 Description]
Outcomes and Expectations
The DBA Design Challenge has raised the profile of inclusivity among all parties involved with the process offering a flexible model for the effective delivery of inclusive design practice to industries where such thinking has not penetrated. Since 2000, 20 different design consultancies from a spectrum of design disciplines have undertaken the challenge. The methodology has been captured in a series of publications (www.hhrc.rca.ac.uk/programmes/sbp/innovate.html) produced throughout the year and disseminated through exhibitions, formal conference papers and other presentations.
Text Decscriptions of Figures
-
Inspiration Park - waist-high island domes with high contrast colour planting.
The picture shows a detail of the nature zone of Inspiration Park with high box hedges in the background to provide different levels of sound density, waist high island domes with high contrast planting and a tough non-slip rubberised surface.
[Return to Figure 1] -
The floating lake - a central feature of the park.
The picture shows visitors underneath the floating lake, a central feature of Inspiration Park. Sandwiched between perforated metal and glass with a path below and beneath, the feature provides a safe and lyrical water experience for visually impaired users.
[Return to Figure 2] -
The swing tag with its tactile colour and size coding for clothing.
The picture shows garments on a rail on which a 'c system' ring bound swatch book hangs from a slender chain. The swatch book consists of embossed oval cards printed in the colour of the shade. Threaded through the chain, they can be flipped easily. Each oval is printed with the name of the shade and bears raised dots to indicate the size and the raised tactile coding system of shapes that indicate the colour.
[Return to Figure 3] -
The silk label component with the bar code scanner.
The picture shows a side and aerial view of Coley Porter Bell's 'c' system bar code scanner and the silk label. Sewn into the garment, the label with its raised coding indicating the shade is a permanent part of the garment and assists the wearer in clothing selection.
[Return to Figure 4] -
A chart of the 59 tactile codes for colour devised for the 'c system'.
The picture shows a chart of the 59 tactile codes for colour devised for the 'c system' in which the shade becomes less intense as a section of the initial coded shape is removed. Each shape can be divided into four giving four variations of decreasing intensity for each colour.
[Return to Figure 5] -
A side view of the Factory Wares saucepan showing its characteristic handle.
The picture shows a side view of the Factory Wares saucepan that is made from spun aluminium. It has conical sides for easy cleaning, and two handles - one on the left for balance and the prominent orange rubberised and heatproof handle. This is straight but angled downwards with a wide platform at its end so that the handle can rest on the underside of the arm. In this way the weight of the pan is spread from the wrist to the arm that increases safety and lessens the pain caused by lifting.
[Return to Figure 6]