Category: Co-design & Design tools

Danish Design Ladder and universal design

Discussing universal design and inclusive practice helps individuals to understand the concept of inclusion. But it’s organisational culture where the change is needed. Everyone has to have the same universal design mindset. The Danish Design Ladder is one way to apply universal design to organisations.

The 6 steps of the Danish Design Ladder
Extended Danish Design Ladder

Design isn’t just for products and websites. Design thinking is also good for designing business strategies and operations. It shapes the brand and business concept. In short, it is good for business, as Matt Davies says. 

The Danish Design Ladder is useful for understanding the power of design within organisations. Universal design thinking comes onto the ladder at Rung 3 – Design as a Process. 

Rungs of the Danish Design Ladder

1 Non-Design:  Design is invisible, product development is done by untrained designers. The user or customer has no part in decisions.

2 Design as Styling:  After the product is developed it is given to a designer to make it look nice. 

3 Design as Process:  This is where design is not the result but a way of thinking. Customers are now the focus of the design process. 

4 Design as Strategy:  Design is embedded in the leadership team to shape the overall business.

5 Design as Systemic Change:  Design is a way of changing systems to solve complex social problems.

6 Design as Culture:  Design is a common mindset, as a way to innovate, a way to listen and and a way to lead. 

An article by Bryan Hoedemaeckers, Are you getting the most out of Design explains more on this. The Ladder is a good way of conceptualising how to weave universal design thinking into the fabric of organisations. 

The Brisbane Olympic Games are less than 10 years away. There is talk of wanting them to be the most accessible games ever. The top three rungs of the Ladder, universal design as strategy, change and culture, will be essential for this outcome. The Legacy Strategy moves to the 4th step of the ladder, but the strategy is about places and things, not culture change. 

Australian researchers used the Danish Design Ladder in an action research project. The title of their paper is, Climbing the Design Ladder; Step by step. The researchers discuss other intermediate “steps” for bringing about culture change. The article is open access. 

Advances in Design for Inclusion

Front cover of the publication.

This book covers several topics in design: universal design; design for all; digital inclusion; universal usability; and accessibility of technologies regardless of users’ age, financial situation, education, geographic location, culture and language.

It has a special focus on accessibility for people with auditory, cognitive, neurological, and visual impairments, ageing populations, and mobility for those with special physical needs.

The title of the book is Advances in Design for Inclusion. It is an academic text, published by Springer, from the proceedings of the International Conference on Design for Inclusion held in Washington DC in July 2019. 

The chapters are diverse and specific. For example, yacht design;  automated vending machines; prisons; parking meters; garden objects; housing; city maps, built environment and much more. Chapters can be purchased separately if you don’t have institutional access.  

Easy English: Same as Easy Read?

Australian Easy English is for people with low or few literacy skills. It is not the same as Easy Read.

Girl sits with a book flicking pages and looking a little unhappy. She needs Books for Everyone.

According to Cathy Basterfield, Easy English is not the same as Easy Read. Her comparison of the two highlights some important differences.

Australian Easy English assumes almost no literacy skill. Material is presented with just three or four short sentences of 5 words on a page. Each sentence is accompanied by a relevant picture or graphic. This means there is a lot of white space which prevents visual confusion caused by lots of words. The aim of Easy English is to tell the reader what to do. It is not about conveying information.

Australian Easy Read on the other hand has an average of 10 words in a sentence. The document includes information which can make if difficult to find the “what to do” instruction. This format assumes a reading level of Grade 4. Unlike Easy English, images are used without headings and there is little white space.

44% of Australian adults do not have the literacy skills for everyday reading tasks such as reading product labels.

Rows of snack food line the supermarket shelves.
Black and white logo for easy read, has a tick and a open book

Long documents often have an Easy Read version which makes it easier for competent readers as well. After all, why read a long and complex report when you can get the same information with less words?

Making a document easy to read and understand is not itself an easy process. The development of Easy English and Easy Read is a mix of language, sentence structure, images and user testing. It’s a design challenge to analyse each element to see what works best.

Comparing the two

The examples below show some of the differences between Easy English and Easy Read. Cathy Basterfield has a succinct three page comparison of the two styles with clear examples.

page from Access Easy English on COVID.
Example of Easy English
A screenshot of the homepage of the website.
Example of Easy Read

More resources

Cathy Basterfield has developed several free Easy English versions of important information. She has a blog page that explains Easy English and Easy Read if you want to know more. 

Editor’s note: Even as a person with good literacy skills, I find Easy English a quick and easy way to understand the key points. I think much of the confusion in the community is due to politicians and others using lots of words when fewer would do, and speaking quickly. When journalists ask questions of politicians they add to the confusion because the politician says the same thing again only using different words. 

Universal design as ‘symbiosis’

Symbiosis is not a word usually associated with universal design, but it’s another way of looking at it. Symbiosis means interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association to the advantage of both.

An article from Malaysia uses symbiosis in the context of designs for the disabled body advantage the non-disabled body – it’s a win-win.

The article covers the usual introductory material about universal design and then moves into a discussion on indoor spaces. The research questions focus on the application of universal design to achieve integration.

The paper recounts three case studies to show how people with disability can get the same sense of belonging as non-disabled people. The use of materials, space function and space planning each have a role to play.

Case studies

Bill and Melinda Gates Discovery Center showing people looking at exhibits.

Bill and Melinda Gates Discovery Centre

The first case study is the Bill and Melinda Gates Discovery Center in Seattle. The centre fosters a collaborative working environment to educate people about global issues including disability.

The second case study is the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. This building is a studio of visual and accessible sensory experiences.

The third case study is Hazelwood School in the UK which transformed a school for children with disability into one for all children.

Hazelwood School

All three projects posed challenges to designers to find ways in which everyone could feel welcome and use the spaces. The article provides more detail on each case study and useful references.

The authors conclude that universal design played an important function in aiding architects to design for people with and without disability.

The purpose of universal design is to create symbiotic relationships between people

The title of the article is, Universal design (UD) in indoor space: Symbiosis between disabled bodies and abled bodies. The abstract uses some confusing language and terms, but the article follows universal design thinking. The links to the case studies are also worth a look.


Co-design in Health Care

Health care is a service and like any service, you want the best for your customers. Customer feedback is common with most services, but knowing the problems after the event is not very effective. The first step is setting up a process that is going to get the most useful design decisions. That means co-designing from the very beginning including co-designing the research method.

Entrance to the emergency section of a hospital.. Co-design in health care.

An inclusive design approach means listening.

A new paper documents the process of using an inclusive design approach to design the study. As a report of the process the paper necessarily includes many stories from participants. These stories are rich in information not limited by survey or interview formats and questions. It is up to the listener or researcher to guide these experiences into practical solutions.

The methods in this study are applicable to any public service, such as transport or education.

Storytelling and research design

Storytelling often goes beyond describing the immediate barriers and difficulties in using a service to reveal the impact on a person’s life.

“The inclusive design approach to the study was not rigid because inclusive design is about diversity, variability and complexity”

Three design exercises

The study reports on three options for design exercises:

Design Exercise Option One: co-designers talk about any part of the health care service that needs re-design. Then the group imagines a future where the barrier no longer exists.

Design Exercise Option Two: co-designers discuss their own or another’s experience during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Design Exercise Option 3: co-designers use the research centre’s “virtuous tornado” exercise. The virtuous tornado is a diagram with three circles, In the centre is the statement, “Like and Use”. The next ring has the statement “Don’t like or have difficulty using”. The outer ring has the statement “Can’t Use”. See the diagram below.

Three rings of a circle indicating the three statements.

Figure 1 from the report with the three options for activities

Co-design is a hot topic at the moment and this paper adds to the research and ideas of how to run co-design processes.

The title of the article is, Co-Design as Applied to Accessibility in Health Care and comes from researchers based in Canada.

Design toolkit for social inclusion

Inclusive Signs Toolkit front cover.
Front cover of the Toolkit.

Social inclusion is a complex topic mainly because it’s not something you can make and touch. It requires a new way of approaching design that avoids bias, stereotypes, and established methods. Emilio Rossi has developed a card-based toolkit to generate creative inclusive design concepts. It’s titled Inclusive Signs and is based on a visual card system. One set has a different picture or symbol, and the second set has text labels. The cards are used to stimulate creative thinking in brainstorming sessions.

A short video on the welcome page of the online version on the toolkit provides a great overview of the basic concepts. 

The first part of the handbook explains the background and how to use the the toolkit. The second part has 180 cards and a worksheet. The toolkit is useful for both design practitioners and educators. It would also be good in co-design processes. The goal is to stimulate deep reflections on social inclusion in all design processes.

Overview

Although disability is one of the topics, design for social inclusion goes further. It tackles issues of social wellbeing, rights, human values, and inequalities.  Designers often struggle to create inclusive products and services beyond access codes. Rossi says moving beyond access codes is crucial for enabling solutions.

The key is gaining insights in the design conception stage. “Otherwise designers will continue to use biased concepts in their creative practice. That is, designing what is known, rather than what may work.”

You can download the 120 MB PDF document.  The 60 descriptive cards have current keywords relating to social inclusion. The aim of the 120 visual cards is to stimulate reflection, emotion, and lateral thinking. The images provide both negative and positive representations. 

Designers should find the content of the toolkit interesting even if they don’t use it in practice or teaching. 

The online version of the Toolkit is also available in several languages. Below are three examples of the text cards.

Card reading shared visions and ideas.

Card reading yes, with, together, visible, for all.

This card reads, participation.

Essential elements of co-design

Ayoung man with a black beard and hair is talking to someone across a table with coloured paper and pens. We need elements of co-design.Co-design in an academic context is part of participatory action research, or PAR. It’s used to understand, inform and change the design of policies, programs and services. But what are the essential elements of co-design? As we know, community engagement or consultation is not the same as co-design. Including diverse stakeholder and user perspectives is essential for developing best practice.

Gabrielle Brand and her team have identified five core co-design principles in the field of health education. Briefly they are: inclusive, respectful, participative, iterative and outcomes focused. These principles apply in other fields too. 

Core co-design principles 

Inclusive: Involve key industry stakeholders and consumers from the initial proposal design. That includes the development and framing of learning focus to final educational outcome and delivery.

Respectful: Health care consumers are considered “experts by experience”. All input is equally valued in design, development and delivery of education.

Participative: The research process is open, responsive and empathetic in co-creating education. It generates new understandings of health and healthcare experiences.

Iterative: A cyclic, collaborative process that takes time. It embraces movement towards a shared education vision. It includes the risk of failure.

Outcomes focused: The focus is on achieving a shared educational outcome co-created during the co-design process.

Brand and her team used conversational interviews transcribed verbatim for analysis. An organic iterative approach to data analysis developed shared understandings. Artefacts were also used in the process for eliciting sensory triggers for participants and for developing vignettes. 

The article details part of a vignette to explain how it was used with learners. It’s based on a mother of an adult son with a psychosocial condition. Members of the research team benefited from knowing they had valuable and legitimate expertise on a research project. 

Title of the article is, A research approach for co-designing education with healthcare consumers. It has a mental health education focus, but the methods are applicable in other fields. 

One of the issues with co-design and PAR is passing ethics approval processes. When an ethics committee labels particular groups as ‘vulnerable’ they apply different approval criteria. However, including the voices of a broad range of people involves the participation of vulnerable groups. 

The end result of this kind of research is to “transform hierarchical health care relationships towards a more humanistic model of care”. 

From the abstract

Context: Community and consumer involvement in health professions education (HPE) is of growing interest among researchers and educators. It prepares health care graduates to effectively learn from, and collaborate with, people with lived experience of health issues. 

Approach: We describe the background to our work with health care consumers including the five core principles for successful co-design and how to apply them as a research approach in HPE.

We used arts and humanities-based teaching methodologies including engagement, meaning-making and translational education strategies. This illustrates how this research approach has been applied to reframe mental health education and practice in Australia. Furthermore, we share some reflective insights on the opportunities and challenges inherent in using a co-design research approach in HPE.

Conclusions: For the consumer voice to be embedded across HPE, there needs to be a collective commitment to curriculum redesign. This paper advances our understandings of the educational research potential of working with health care consumers to co-design rich and authentic learning experiences in HPE.

Co-design research approaches that partner with and legitimise health care consumers as experts by experience may better align education and health professional practice with consumers’ actual needs, an important first step in transforming hierarchical health care relationships towards more humanistic models of care.

Assoc Prof Gabrielle Brand is based at Monash University Peninsula Campus.

Health professional education research

Two New Zealand researchers in health science say it is time to apply universal design principles to health education research. They take the universal design principles that originated in architecture and translate them to universal design for research.

The researchers use the The three pillars of universal design for learning (UDL) as the means to crosswalk from architecture to research. The aim is to embrace and enact diversity in research design. This, of course, means engagement with people most often excluded from health education research. 

The title of the article is,  Designing for justice: How universal design theory could bolster health professional education research.

 

Readability and colour choices

Colour contrasts can be deceiving because we are subject to optical illusions. The video below shows how two different shades of grey are actually the same. That’s why you can’t rely on judging contrast by eye. Fortunately there are colour checkers to help with colour choices especially for websites. And why do you need colour contrast checkers? Because more than 8% of the population has colour vision deficiency (colour blindness). 

A semi-trailer is stuck under a bridge with the warning "low bridge" in upper case. Colour choice is one factor in readability. Others include using sentence case. Using upper case or capitals does not convey important messages more urgently. The image shows that using upper case to indicate a low bridge did not stop a truck driver from driving under it. Upper case is harder to read because the shape of the words are unfamiliar. 

The most accessible websites are those that have an Easy Read option.  A good example is the My Allied Health Space. At the top of the home page is the symbol for Easy Read and this is where you click to turn it on. 

Screenshot of Allied Health Space standard format.
My Allied Health Space home page with option for Easy Read at the top of the page

Screenshot my allied health space in easy read format.
My Allied Health Space with Easy Read option turned on

Thanks to Dr Em Bould, Senior Research Fellow at Monash University for the inspiration for this post. Dr Bould has great advice on this topic based on research. 

QDN’s Co-design principles

Front cover of QDN Co-design priniciples.Co-design is the new buzzword in the field of disability. But co-design isn’t only about disability inclusion. It’s a design process that seeks the best design for the intended users. Including people from a diversity of backgrounds, ages, levels of capability and experience is good practice. It’s how you do universal design. But what is it exactly and how does it work? 

The ultimate in co-design is to include users from design concept stage. The next best thing is to include users in testing the first prototype. Many design firms say budget and time constraints prevent them from implementing this highly iterative method. But how much does it cost to remedy poor design and lack of compliance? 

Co-design should not be confused with community consultation which seeks opinions about a design. User testing is not a form of co-design either. Co-design is where designers and users share the power of designing together. Co-design processes work for developing products, buildings, websites, services, policies and guidelines.

Queenslanders with Disability Network (QDN) have published their Co-Design Principles. This document obviously focuses on people with disability and the Queensland context. Regulation, legislation and policies such as the state disability plan fill most pages. 

 Five values underpin QDN’s co-design principles and processes:

      • Authentic Voice – We ensure those with limited or no voice are heard and valued
      • Collaborative Action – We learn from collective experiences, values, and wisdom 
      • Rights – We believe in a human rights approach 
      • Respect – We value human difference and diversity 
      • Resilience – We are here for the long term.

Co-design processes

A three page summary has the key points above and the co-design processes. 

The starting place – Craft the question that reflects intent/purpose and invites inquiry. 
Build the team – Get diversity and support inclusion
Discovery Phase – See the issue from different viewpoints, and perspectives. Hear from others including those who disagree
Pause and Reflect – Take time to pause and reflect on what you have learnt in the discovery phase and what you still don’t know before jumping to solutions
Sense-making – Look at the data, story, research, and evidence in their raw form and work together to make sense and meaning of what has been gathered
Generate options – Stage where sense-making starts to yield conclusions, ideas
and possibilities, and people get in the creative zone
Developing Prototypes – Generate as many ideas as possible and develop a working example of the policy, service, program, product, or scenario-based solution
Learning, reworking, and refining – Part of the learning cycle and reworks can produce ‘prototype’ – the solution for testing, piloting, or putting into action
Embed what works – Turn it into action and make it real. Keep people engaged and stay accountable.

The QDN website has more information about the organisation and their activities.

See other articles on co-design: The right to participate in co-design, and What does co-design mean? How does it work? 

Consulting people with disability

Front cover Consulting with persons with disabilities.
Full guidelines

Consulting people with disability just needs careful planning. Yes, of course it takes time, but all consultation takes time. But it is always worth it because it saves time in rectifications later. 

The United Nations Inclusion Strategy has guidelines for consulting persons with disabilities. The main guideline document is very detailed and links with the UN Convention Indicator 5. It covers representative organisations, when to consult, and how to do it. The Easy Read version is very helpful for everyone. 

 

Front cover of Easy Read Guide Consulting people with disability.
Easy Read version

The Easy Read version has the key information. It covers the importance of consulting, taking part in decisions, and working with representative organisations. There are links to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals with the promise of “leave no one behind”. 

One key point in this version is that people with disability should be involved in decisions about everything – not just things to do with disability. 

 

Some days don’t have 24 hours

Lots of clock faces piled on top of each other showing different times. Week has seven days and every day has 24 hours. We all know that. But some people don’t have the same amount of time available within 24 hours as others. And it isn’t a case of poor time management. Time gets stolen. So what does it mean when I say, “some days don’t have 24 hours”?

Sheri Byrne-Haber pinpoints the issues in her article in Medium about the disability time thief. Sometimes it’s a few moments here and there, and sometimes it a regular chunk. 

This article shows why consulting with people with disability is not a matter of setting a date and time and sending out the invitation. The time of day and the place are really important considerations. 

The title of Byrne-Haber’s article is We don’t all have the same 24 hours. Anyone who thinks that we do lives in a monster privilege bubble.

 

Understanding typefaces for accessibility

Example of typefaces images.
Image courtesy Medium

More people have difficulty reading than most people think. Low vision, dyslexia, low literacy, and learning disabilities are some of the reasons. Previous posts have covered the topic of plain language and Easy Read. But choosing the right typeface is also important for communicating successfully. Without understanding typefaces, things like colour contrast will make little difference. 

Gareth Ford Williams explains key elements in his article. He says claims of some typefaces being more accessible than others are not backed up by evidence. 

lower case 'i' and upper case 'L' and '1' look the same.
Gill Sans upper case ‘i’, lower case ‘L’ and ‘1’

Different typefaces provide different styles in how letters are formed. For example, Gill Sans upper case ‘i’ and lower case ”l’ and ‘1’ look the same. However, in Verdana they are distinct from each other. 

Mirroring is something than young children do. For example, muddling ‘b’ and ‘d’ and ‘p’ and ‘q’. However, the letter flipping effect can be lifelong. 

Spacing or ‘visual crowding’ is another consideration. Some typefaces have the same space between letters regardless of letter width. Helvetica is one example. Calibri has different spacing between letters. A wide letter like m has more space around it than an i or a t. In some cases the letters can look joined up such as ‘ol’ or ‘vv’. Tight letter spacing is not great for people with good vision either. 

The article has several good examples to illustrate points made. The title is, A Guide to Understanding What Makes a Typeface Accessible. Williams makes the point that there is no one right typeface. As always, it depends on your audience. However, this article provides great insights into yet another aspect of communicating accessibly. The article is technical in some places.

Thanks to Dawn Campbell on Linked In for alerting me to this article.

Guide for body shape and size

A page from the Guide for body shape and size.How much do our body shapes and sizes differ? A lot. But if you only know a few different shapes and sizes, how will you know if your design is inclusive? A guide for body shape and size is a useful reference.

The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in Ireland has a set of information sheets on body shape and size. They guide designers in how to apply these factors in their work to achieve more universally designed products and services.

The overview of the guideline project explains the importance of considering body shape and size in designs. For governments and other institutions it helps with the selection and procurement of everyday products such as street furniture. Designing for the extremes of body shape and size affords extra convenience for all users. It also helps avoid user discomfort, embarrassment and even harm. There are five fact sheets

A related academic paper from 2014 takes body size and shape further and applies it to mobility devices. The guide to the circulation requirements for various wheeled mobility devices is from Denmark. It includes research on the spatial needs for parking as well as toilets and building entries as well as accessible paths of travel.

Charts with dimensions of the various mobility types is included and includes tables for children and the bariatric population. The guide also discusses the need to think to the future of mobility devices and not assume that the size and styles will remain the same. 

Person-environment fit using the ICF 

Making the environment fit for all regardless of capacity is an important goal for public health efforts. But valid methods for measuring accessibility are currently lacking. This study aims to address this lack. Using the ICF as a conceptual framework, a typology of person-environment fit was developed along three dimensions: 1) accessibility problem range and severity; 2) aspects of functioning; 3) environmental context.

Front cover of the ICF. Red with white text.

Abstract background: 

Making the built environment accessible for all regardless of functional capacity is an important goal for public health efforts. Considerable impediments to achieving this goal suggest the need for valid measurements of accessibility and for greater attention to the complexity of person-environment fit issues.

 

To address these needs, this study aimed to provide a methodological platform, useful for further research and instrument development within accessibility research. This was accomplished by the construction of a typology of problematic person-environment fit constellations, utilizing an existing methodology developed to assess and analyze accessibility problems in the built environment.”

Download Typology of person-environment fit constellations: a platform addressing accessibility problems in the built environment for people with functional limitations.

Article by Björn Slaug, Oliver Schilling, Susanne Iwarsson, and Gunilla Carlsson

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