Inclusive Teaching of Inclusive Design
Written by Antoinette Fennell Monday, 17 January 2011
CFIT’s Antoinette Fennell and Mark Magennis were both involved in the National Disability Authority (NDA) Centre for Excellence in Universal Design’s 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge 2010 on 26th and 27th November.
Antoinette was Co-Director of the 2009 Challenge in her previous job in Trinity College Dublin and she was delighted to be invited back this year as Design Team Co-ordinator for the 2nd annual Challenge.
Mark Magennis was invited to sit on the Judging Panel, which decided the winner of the Judges’ Choice Award.
The Challenge presents an intense but fun opportunity to introduce design professionals and design students to the world of inclusive or universal design. This particular event uses a formula developed by Julia Cassim of the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, in which five teams of approximately 7 design professionals, 2 design students and one person with a disability (who is an integral design partner on the team) compete over a 24 hour period to devise and present a design concept.
The aim of the competition is not for a team to design a specific solution for their design partner, but rather to use the experiences of that person as an “inspirational trigger” for inclusive design solutions. The intention is to demonstrate to designers that by designing for the more extreme user, you can actually create mainstream design solutions that are more accessible, usable and enjoyable for everyone. The partnership of designers with extreme users (users with a severe disability or multiple disabilities) is one of many different approaches to inclusive design.
Across the globe, inclusive design movements have demonstrated limited uptake among professional designers and design school teachers. This is, in part, because the financial and social benefits of designing in a more inclusive way are not immediately apparent. It can also be difficult to motivate design teachers to add to or change their curriculum as a result of time and resource constraints.
In light of this, the way in which we inclusive design advocates actually promote inclusive design teaching/training therefore needs itself to become more inclusive. We need to explore more creative ways of offering inclusive design to designers and design teachers. If they can be convinced that it can be easy (and fun!) to learn, and that it fits in with their current design approach, they may therefore be more easily recruited.
Like trying out a new product for the first time, if inclusive design is not offered in an accessible way, designers will be less likely to regularly apply it, or indeed to bother with it at all.
CFIT’s Josh O’Connor is an advisor on the ongoing CEN Workshop Agreement on Curriculum for training professionals in Universal Design, which is chaired by the NDA’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design. The aim of this pan-European initiative is to specify and recommend a curriculum for training ICT professionals in universal design.
As the CEN Workshop Agreement strives to create quality course content, a training event such as the 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge presents one option for promoting this content among mainstream design communities in an energetic and positive way. The nature of the event (running over an intense 24 hour period) would not appeal to all designers or design partners. However it would be worthwhile to consider variations of the Challenge formula as a method of reaching a wider range of design professionals.
Further information on the 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge 2010 can be found on the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design website at http://www.universaldesign.ie/24challenge/
Further information on the CEN Workshop Agreement can be found on the CEN website at http://www.cen.eu/CEN/sectors/sectors/isss/workshops/Pages/ws-ud-prof-curriculum.aspx