Making Access: Increasing Inclusiveness in Making

2003

This paper reports on two qualitative methods - 'technology biographies' and 'cultural probes' - as methods to facilitate research in interdisciplinary research in domestic settings. As designers increasingly need to be aware of the broader social impact of technology, traditional approaches need to be supplemented by detailed investigations into everyday life and needs - and 'cultural probes' and 'technology biographies' may prove a useful part of the researcher's methodological repertoire. 1.

AERA 2016 Division C: Learning and Instruction (Section 3a: Learning Environments) Chair: Angela Calabrese Barton, Michigan State University Discussant: Kris Gutiérrez, University of California, Berkeley Abstract Despite the growing interest and attention paid to maker spaces for transforming how we understand ‘what counts’ as learning, as a learner, and as learning environment, there is little evidence that the maker movement has been broadly successful in involving a diverse audience. Few studies have focused on the equity-oriented dimensions of makerspaces and making. Our session seeks to reverse this trend. Across the 8 papers/posters, we present examples of studies focused on designing/enacting inclusive makerspaces for young people in formal or informal education settings, provide innovative theoretical and methodological tools for better understanding learning and development of young people who participate in making, and discuss how researchers and practitioners can collaborate to build makerspaces for all.

This paper develops our understanding of the nature of inclusive design, first through critique of controversies that to some degree downplay inclusive design as a distinct design movement. Attentive of these criticisms we then observe designer-making practices in two cases, which respect individual difference and encourage a more material mode of participation. By bringing the bodily experience of people with (dis)abilities more closely into their own design processes we see positive characteristics and advantage in inclusive design's closer connections with making. This research advocates the expansion of inclusive design into a more material, inclusive designer-making movement, to acknowledge the universal problem of designing for everyone's unique difference. Crown

2016

When discussing maker culture, much attention is dedicated to how making can be beneficial for specific fields (e.g. healthcare, education) or various communities of makers (e.g. educators, crafters). The democratic ideal of personal fabrication and the maker culture movement represented by the growth of open makerspaces (e.g. FabLabs, makerspaces) and online communities (e.g. ‘Instructables’, ‘Thingiverse’) worldwide provides everyone with the opportunity to make (almost) anything. However, structurally engaging non-expert users still remains an important challenge for most open makerspaces. Therefore, this article focuses on the potential of open makerspaces for communities and more specifically how to involve nonexpert users in these open makerspaces. Framed within the fields of Participatory Design and infrastructuring, this article presents two case studies ‘Hack-a-thing’ and ‘Making Things’ that are part of a long-term participation process of engaging local non-expert users i...

The future is a hard thing to stop. It's is avoided by some, accepted by others, and shaped by all of us. From a design standpoint, there is a future that looms on the horizon that research suggests is all but here, and in many places, it has already arrived. That future is one of Inclusive Design. Sometimes referred to as Universal Design or Design for All, Inclusive design aims to provide products, services, and more generally, access to a larger segment of the population. The focus is typically on a few key demographics that have been historically underserved by traditional design. Those groups include children, the elderly, and those with a range of physical emotional or cognitive disabilities. The need for Inclusive Design was made clear to me while working on a recent project. While examining the social isolation that is prevalent in children undergoing long-term hospital care, it became apparent that not much existed in the way of including these children as members of a larger population. These children have specific subset of needs and concerns that exist along side their health condition. Ill children desire to feel connected to others in the same ways healthy children do, and it is imperative for them to find this connection because doing so increases both their physical and emotional health. Furthermore, inclusive design is not solely about creating products that solve problems, but about creating things that also address the stigma of needing to use assistive products . Though, this experience was eye opening, the subsequent research revealed that the need for inclusive design expands far outside the healthcare industry and touches nearly every facet of life. In this paper I will examine the recent trends in the field of Inclusive Design, specifically in United States, the UK, and Scandinavia, as a means of illustrating the need to design an inclusive future.

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2000

Inclusive design approaches aim to create products that are suitable for the non-disabled and disabled alike. Traditionally, such approaches have concentrated on creating products which, whilst fitting with the special cognitive and/or physical needs of the disabled, have also brought benefits to the non-disabled. Examples of such products include the ballpoint pen and the TV remote control. Whilst those two are excellent examples of inclusive design, it will be argued in this paper that inclusive approaches which concentrate on only the cognitive and physical aspects of disability are limited. A new paradigm for inclusive design is proposed. This paradigm is based on looking at people holistically — taking into account people's lifestyles and values. A framework for considering such issues — the four pleasures — is described. It is argued that many ‘inclusive’ designs fail through failing to reflect the diverse values and lifestyles of the disabled. Examples are given, demonstr...

Makerspace leaders must take action to improve equity of access in use of emerging technology.¶

Proceedings on the 2000 conference on Universal Usability - CUU '00, 2000

It is known that many products are not accessible to large sections of the population. Designers instinctively design for able-bodied users and are either unaware of the needs of users with different capabilities, or do not know how to accommodate their needs into the design cycle.

Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. …, 2009

Inclusive design has traditionally dealt with physical design and differences in age and ability. However, as information technology becomes more pervasive, the new barriers to inclusivity are increasingly digital. Centring design around people can increase competitiveness and value, especially in fast-moving technology markets, but technology-specific, people-centred strategies need to be developed that build on existing inclusive design processes and go beyond the ’technology-push needs-pull’ approach to accommodate the social complexity that surrounds the everyday use of technology. This paper focuses on the challenges of implementing inclusive design in an technology context, illustrating this with examples drawn from the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre (HHC). It outlines work done with students within an educational context and projects completed by design graduates working with industry. The case studies aim to demonstrate an approach that brings together the user’s voice and the designer’s creativity to enable a more inclusive approach.

IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings, 2018

In this Research Work in Progress paper, we describe the methods chosen for a project exploring best practices of inclusion in maker spaces serving diverse populations. Maker spaces provide communities access to innovation tools in startup settings that are shaped by the participating members. In our study, these include not only hacker spaces that involve computing, electronic activities, and three-dimensional printing capabilities, but also sites focusing on traditional arts and crafts. Sites selected represent sustainable examples of the values embedded in maker space missions: to promote shared space (physical or virtual, temporary or permanent), materials, and knowledge for the purpose of putting production back in the hands of the people. To study the dynamics through which a community and its space come together, we have employed methods including content analysis, ethnographically-informed participant-observations, and an open space technology workshop/Unconference combined with participatory action research (PAR). We position PAR as both a method and as a methodology, providing a justification for our flexible approach and adaptable strategies. We will describe the process of data collection leading up to the Unconference, how various perspectives are combined at the Unconference, and how the PAR component is threaded throughout the entire project. Finally, we explain our use of the theoretical framework and analytical tool of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which guides our interpretations of interactions in both the maker spaces and our participatory action research process.