Towards a practical inclusive design approach

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

This paper considers appropriate research methodologies for the development of Universal Usability. It is written from the viewpoint of research which has the long term objective of developing technological systems for everyone, including people with disabilities. It considers whether new research paradigms are appropriate and how they are different from those used within traditional technological research. It suggests the development of a new paradigm of "User Sensitive Inclusive Design" which includes people with disabilities within a User Centred Design methodology, and recommends a collaborative approach to the development of such a methodology.

Proceedings of the 2nd …, 2004

The aim of inclusive design is to make products accessible to the widest possible population. Although inclusive design is not a new genre, given that similar ideas already existed in the 1970s, the context today is different from that of thirty years ago. The new technology, the emerging 'grey' market and the growing disability movement leading to the integration of disabled people into the mainstream society, etc., have formed a new paradigm of designing for inclusion.

2005

Everyday products and services are developed with constraints on both time and cost . Such limitations often prevent designers from involving real users to assess the usability and accessibly of their designs. This absence of the user during the design process may result in excessively demanding or inaccessible design interactions for a large number of typical "non-mainstream" consumers. This might include for instance the older adult and disabled populations.

Applied Ergonomics, 2014

Inclusive design has unique challenges because it aims to improve usability for a wide range of users. This typically includes people with lower levels of ability, as well as mainstream users. This paper examines the effectiveness of two methods that are used in inclusive design: user trials and exclusion calculations (an inclusive design inspection method). A study examined three autoinjectors using both methods (n ¼ 30 for the user trials). The usability issues identified by each method are compared and the effectiveness of the methods is discussed. The study found that each method identified different kinds of issues, all of which are important for inclusive design. We therefore conclude that a combination of methods should be used in inclusive design rather than relying on a single method. Recommendations are also given for how the individual methods can be used more effectively in this context.

2005

In order to create effective inclusive designs, we need to address many questions -not only issues of design itself, but also questions surrounding the design process: methodological, ethical and practical. If we are to address these effectively, we need to identify them, consider the options and think through their implications. Nowhere is this more true than in the development of technology for older people, an increasingly important area in the light of the increasingly aging population. This paper presents some first steps in the exploration of these issues in this context, mapping out a space of the issues and discussing each of them in greater depth. We report on views expressed at workshops on inclusive design and the older population held during 2004, particularly one run at HCI 2004, involving 24 participants from academia, industry and the older population.

University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering. PhD Thesis.

This thesis investigates the role of prior experience of products and its affect upon interaction. It has been shown within this work that technological experience of products is related to age, and that this has implications for the success of subsequent interaction. This research adds weight to a growing body of literature that has identified age related and generational differences toward product interaction. Implications for intuitive design such as the use of familiar features and icon design are also identified. The adoption of a novel inclusive design approach, framing interaction using an interactional, behavioural model, is proposed as a potential method to identify issues that cause unnecessary interactional complexity. The contribution of this work is to provide the design community with new knowledge and a greater awareness of the diversity of user needs, and particularly the needs and skills of older people. The hope is that the awareness of this knowledge can, in turn, assist toward the community’s development of better design methods. The approach introduced can be applied to new and existing products alike and can aid the development of products that are more accessible and easier to use for a wider proportion of the population

Inclusive Design, 2024

INCLUSIVE DESIGN A (PRAGMATICAL) REVIEW / UN RIESAME COMPLETO Giulio Ceppi postmedia books 2024 isbn 9788874904174

Work (Reading, Mass.), 2012

This paper focuses Design importance in the development of effectively inclusive products based on Design Emotional approach, allowing children with disabilities to experience playing in the childhood as an instrument for social integration. The methodology used to develop this study was based on literature review, considering the following themes: emotional design, accessibility and inclusion, emotion and development of children. As a result, we propose a new level of need to model the hierarchy of needs, of Jordan ("usability", "functionality" and "pleasure"), level with the inclusion of "dignity."

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd eBooks, 2017

One of the continuing challenges of Human Computer Interaction research is the full inclusion of people with special needs into the digital world. In particular, this crucial category includes people that experience some kind of limitation in exploiting traditional information communication channels. One immediately thinks about blind people, and several lines of research aim at addressing their needs. On the contrary, limitations suffered by deaf people are oftenunderestimated. This is often the result of a kind of ignorance or misunderstanding of the real nature of their communication difficulties. This chapter aims at both increasing the awareness of deaf problems in the digital world, and at proposing the project of a comprehensive solution for their better inclusion. As for the former goal, we will provide a birds-eye presentation of history and evolution of understanding of deafness issues, and of strategies to address them. As for the latter, we will present the design, implementation and evaluation of the first nucleus of a comprehensive digital framework to facilitate the access of deaf people into the digital world.