Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.
The title of her short paper and workshop is, Reframing Universal Design: Creating Short Videos for Inclusion. Her research provides insights on how videos travel and reach different audiences. This results in a significant impact and enacted change and informed policy. Dr Rieger concludes that “video impacts more than policies, codes and papers ever can”.
Here is an extract from her paper:
“Video is a visceral medium, offering the opportunity to reframe universal design practice and education. It captures movements and can be co-created with people with disabilities. Videos co-created for inclusion encourage detailed and rich embodied knowledge and experiences because information is prompted by association with one’s surroundings. Significantly, videos have the capacity to excavate personalized knowledge of those with different abilities and uncover systems of exclusion that are often hidden or naturalized, and shamedly rendered invisible through policies, codes and papers.”
In a short video titled, Wandering on the Braille Trail, Sarah Boulton explains how she navigates the environment using her white cane and tactile ground markers.
How do you include people in decisions that will affect them when it’s not easy for them to participate? It’s a chicken and egg situation. So, asking people with disability to contribute takes more than a survey or a community meeting. It needs a much more thoughtful process. Janice Rieger has some thoughts on the right to participate and co-design polices and processes.
Public sector co-designing is an emerging field of practice. It provides the opportunity for creativity and innovative ideas. Reframing participatory engagement through a social justice lens takes us towards a co-designing process.
Editorial Introduction
“We are entering a new era in Australia as we envision a new disability strategy to replace the current national disability strategy (2010–2020). During this transition, we can reflect on and recognise the changing disability landscape in Australia and ensure that we create a just and inclusive Australian society.
Recent consultations and reports have called for people with a disability to directly engage in designing the new disability strategy in Australia, but what does that entail, and how will the rights of people with disabilities be upheld throughout this process?
This brief describes public sector co-designing practice—an emerging practice aiming to open up new trajectories for policy development through a co-design process and to provide best practice recommendations for the next disability strategy in Australia.”
Human-centred design is an approach to problem-solving that puts people at the heart of the process. It’s about empathy with users. This style of approach has the potential to generate more varied ideas for design solutions. It’s more than community engagement – it’s a collaborative and iterative design process. Collaboration and iteration are at the core of a universal design approach.
The Victorian Government’s Human-Centred Design Playbook is specifically for the public sector. And not just those with job descriptions that are about policy, planning and design.
The aim is to help staff collaborate better with the service design team, service designers, and external design agencies. The guide does some of the thinking in helping to assess options and practical steps for implementing the project.
Taking an iterative approach to design is at the heart of the process. “We iterate because we know that we won’t get it right the first time. Or even the second… it allows us to keep learning.”
At 100 pages covering methods, design plans, outputs and case studies this playbook has everything. The Digital, Design and Innovation branch of the Department of Premier and Cabinet produced the playbook. It is designed as a starting point for planning and scoping design-based activities.
Design consultant David Townson discusses his seven principles of human-centred design in a Design Council blog article. He has spent his career developing products and services to make them work for people. He argues that users are human beings – that includes every human being a design impacts.
New designers often miss this subtle point and focus on a specific primary user, says Townson. And there could be more than one primary user. The factory-workers that make it, the courier that delivers it, the installer, and the mechanic who fixes it. Even the person who disposes it at the end of its life.
“All design should be human centred, it’s as simple as that. And I mean human-centred, not ‘user-centred’ or ‘user-friendly’”
David Townson, design consultant
7 principles of human-centred design
According to Townson, these are briefly, the seven principles of human-centred design:
Get past your own great idea. Observe the environment in which you are designing, watch people in that environment, talk to people and observe them in shops.
Don’t be restricted by your own knowledge. During the research process ask smart, naive questions. Eliminate all your assumptions and turn them into validated knowledge. Being convinced you know everything isn’t conducive to that outcome.
Spend time with real people in real environments. Observation of people is crucial. It is this keen and open-minded observation that triggers off a great idea in the first place. That’s how the famous OXO Good Grips came to be designed.
Identify other users. Following on from the OXO story, the designer discovered that it wasn’t something only his wife needed. They identified expert users – chefs.
Follow your users lead and needs. Chefs wanted it too. But they wanted a blade with steel. So that’s what they did and improved the design.
Think about the whole journey of the product. As a designer you cannot just stop at your primary user as the product has a life before and after that and impacts on people beyond them. Think about what happens during and at the end of the product’s life.
Prototype and test your idea. Prototyping forces you to share your ideas rather than developing them in a vacuum. Seek out people who may have a different take on things allowing you to validate your idea and gain constructive feedback from potential users – beyond the easy feedback given from family and friends.
It isn’t just about consulting with humans in the design process. It is about understanding the impact that design has on us as humans. Sarah Williams Goldhagen argues that people undervalue good design.
There is no such thing as neutral when it comes to design of the built environment. It has either a positive or negative effect on people.
A place should inspire uses and passers by. If it doesn’t support what people need to do then it is eroding wellbeing and impoverishing people’s lives. This is especially the case when you can’t even get into a place or space because it is inaccessible. Goldhagen goes on to say that good design is less about personal taste and more about human bodies and minds. Goldhagen’s article is in the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. It is titled, What is Human-Centered Design? Should Anyone Care?
Finding out what older adults might want and need in their daily living experiences takes more than just asking them, especially if they have a cognitive impairment. Using creative methods, such as drawing and creating models, older people can express their needs in a tactile format. This also creates rapport with designers who can then devise better mobility, dining and leisure activities. This method is enjoyable for all participants.
This paper discusses co-design experiences with various stakeholders to explore latent needs of older persons in their daily living using a universal design approach. Through iterative use of creative methods, freehand sketching and physical models, older adults express their needs in a more accurate, tactile format.
Findings reveal that commonality of interest among older persons are important in building rapport among other participants. It also helps designers develop designs related to health care, mobility, dining and leisure activities.
Older adults and co-design
Older adults want the same designs as anyone else. Too often older people are gathered together under the umbrella of “the elderly”. This term assumes everyone is the same. It’s applied to people as young as 60 or 65 and every age after that. We can debate the terms but in the end, we are talking about people and design.
An article in Design Week challenges assumptions about older people and design. It reports on a study involving older people in design projects. They found older people “want what we want”. The ‘we’ in this context is young designers.
A key point is that people can live independently for longer if things are designed around their needs. In the end, age isn’t relevant. But designing inclusively is. That’s why devices designed specifically for older people are bought but often abandoned.
What does ‘ageing in place’ actually mean? For some it means staying put in the family home in their later years. For others it means staying in the same community.
Researchers at the University of Manchester developed a ‘village’ model of support based on those in the US. The residents came together to identify the services that they need and how they could be better managed. Storytelling was an integral part of the data collection. Ideas were generated for supporting ageing in place at a local level.
Front cover of the report
The report recounts the difficulties recruiting volunteers and participants as well as overcoming distrust of decision-makers. Access to formal and informal meeting places was also an issue.
Recommendations include building social infrastructure and strengthening organisations led by older people. The title of the report is, Community interventions to promote ‘ageing in place‘. This is a large file.
Co-designing with people living with dementia
A diagnosis of dementia used to mean staying home and being cared for. Those who work in the area of dementia are doing their best to change this view. But is the design community prepared to embrace people living with dementia? Paul Rogers reports in Co-designing with people living with dementiadisruptive design interventions to break the cycle of well-formed mindsets. The co-design method has provided ways for people with dementia to continue contributing to society and have fulfilling lives.
The co-design project was to create a new tartan design. Each person with dementia directed the researcher to co-create their digital design one colour at a time.
The Disrupting Dementia tartan project shows how co-design methods and tools can enable people living with dementia to make a significant contribution to society after diagnosis. Although dementia changes some aspects of a person, it does not affect their sense of self. Projects such as these not only inform designers, they also give a sense of inclusion and belonging to people with dementia.
From the abstract
This paper illustrates methods for co-designing with people living with dementia in developing a mass-produced product. The research was carried out in collaboration with Alzheimer Scotland using a range of disruptive design interventions. The aim was to break the cycle of we-formed opinions, mindsets, and ways-of-doing that remain unchallenged. The research has resulted in co-designed interventions to help change the perception of dementia.
People living with dementia can offer much to UK society after diagnosis. Co-designed activities and interventions help reconnect people recently diagnosed with dementia to help build their self-esteem, identity and dignity. Co-design processes help keep people with dementia connected to their community, thus delaying the need for formal support,
We worked collaboratively with over 130 people with dementia across Scotland in the co-design and development of a new tartan. The paper concludes with recommendations for researchers when co-designing with people living with dementia.
The paper reports on three design interventions using co-design activities with people diagnosed with dementia. The interventions offer innovations for co-designing with this group.
To move or not to move?
We expect to grow old, but because we don’t aspire to grow old, we rarely plan for it. “I’ll worry about it when the time comes” is a usual response. A report from AHURI looks at the housing situation for older Australians and some previous research is confirmed.
Most respondents felt their current home would suit them as they grow older, but they are not planning ahead. If they are, they lack information on how to go about it, what to look for, and what their options are other than age-segregated housing.
A significant proportion of respondents hadn’t thought about planning ahead for their living arrangements. This is one reason why we need the Livable Housing Design Standard adopted in all states and territories. It is in the 2022 edition of the National Construction Code and there is a handbook for designers.
It is often said that older people want to stay put, but this may not be the case for everyone. A study from Berlin, Germany looked at this issue in depth. While some of the findings might be specific to Berlin, the article raises interesting questions.
The researchers found that social class, gender, age and migrant history were not necessarily measures of movement behaviour. The top three reasons that emerged were: to have a smaller apartment, an obstacle-free apartment, and to have to a cheaper apartment.
Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.
How do you include people in decisions that will affect them when it’s not easy for them to participate? It’s a chicken and egg situation. So, asking people with disability to contribute takes more than a survey or a community meeting. It needs a much more thoughtful process. Janice Rieger has some thoughts on the right to participate and co-design polices and processes.
Human-centred design is an approach to problem-solving that puts people at the heart of the process. It’s about empathy with users. This style of approach has the potential to generate more varied ideas for design solutions. It’s more than community engagement – it’s a collaborative and iterative design process. Collaboration and iteration are at the core of a universal design approach.
Finding out what older adults might want and need in their daily living experiences takes more than just asking them, especially if they have a cognitive impairment. Using creative methods, such as drawing and creating models, older people can express their needs in a tactile format. This also creates rapport with designers who can then devise better mobility, dining and leisure activities. This method is enjoyable for all participants.
Older adults want the same designs as anyone else. Too often older people are gathered together under the umbrella of “the elderly”. This term assumes everyone is the same. It’s applied to people as young as 60 or 65 and every age after that. We can debate the terms but in the end, we are talking about people and design.
