Designing Inclusive Systems

The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) are a series of workshops held at a Cambridge University College every two years. The workshop theme: “Designing inclusion for real-world applications” refers to the emerging potential and relevance of the latest generations of inclusive design thinking, tools, techniques, and data, to mainstream project applications such as healthcare and the design of working environments. Inclusive Design Research involves developing tools and guidance enabling product designers to design for the widest possible population, for a given range of capabilities. There are five main themes: Designing for the Real-World Measuring Demand And Capabilities Designing Cognitive Interaction with Emerging Technologies Design for Inclusion Designing Inclusive Architecture In the tradition of CWUAAT, we have solicited and accepted contributions over a wide range of topics, both within individual themes and also across the workshop’s scope. We ultimately hope to generate more inter-disciplinary dialogues based on focused usage cases that can provide the discipline necessary to drive further novel research, leading to better designs. The aim is to impact industry and end-users as well governance and public design, thereby effectively reducing exclusion and difficulty in peoples’ daily lives and society.

This proceedings book presents papers from the 10th Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology. The CWUAAT series of workshops have celebrated a long history of interdisciplinarity, including design disciplines, computer scientists, engineers, architects, ergonomists, ethnographers, ethicists, policymakers, practitioners, and user communities. This reflects the wider increasing realisation over the long duration of the series that design for inclusion is not limited to technology, engineering disciplines, and computer science but instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. The key to this is providing a platform upon which the different disciplines can engage and see each other’s antecedents, methods, and point of view. This proceedings book of the 10th CWUAAT conference presents papers in a variety of topics including Reconciling usability, accessibility, and inclusive design; Designing inclusive assistive and rehabilitation systems; Designing cognitive interaction with emerging technologies; Designing inclusive architecture; Data mining and visualising inclusion; Legislation, standards, and policy in inclusive design; Situational inclusive interfaces; and The historical perspective: 20 years of CWUAAT. CWUAAT has always aimed to be inclusive in the fields that it invites to the workshop. We must include social science, psychologies, anthropologies, economists, politics, governance, and business. This requirement is now energised by imminent new challenges arising from techno-social change. In particular, artificial intelligence, wireless technologies, and the Internet of Things generate a pressing need for more socially integrated projects with operational consequences on individuals in the built environment and at all levels of design and society. Business cases and urgent environmental issues such as sustainability and transportation should now be a focus point for inclusion in an increasingly challenging world. This proceedings book continues the goal of designing for inclusion, as set out by the CWUAAT when it first started.

The elderly population is growing and disabilities tend to increase with age. Professionals in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) are becoming increasingly aware of the needs of the elderly and people with disabilities. They also need to ensure that systems are designed for all, with specific consideration of these groups, not only computing systems but also other assistive and adaptive technologies such as information services and the use of smart cards, assistive robotics, systems for travellers, and home and environmental control systems. This book will help designers world-wide find relevant guidelines for the design of human-computer interaction and ensure that systems are designed for all, with specific consideration of people who are elderly and people with disabilities. Including reports from the International Federation of Information Processing's Working Group on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Disability. The book will be the first compendium of guidelines.

We make inaccessible and unusable websites and apps all the time, but it's not for lack of skill or talent. It's just a case of doing things the wrong way. We try to build the best experiences we can, but we only make them for ourselves and for people like us. This book looks at common interface patterns from the perspective of an inclusive designer-someone trained in building experiences that cater to the huge diversity of abilities, preferences and circumstances out there. There's no such thing as an 'average' user, but there is such a thing as an average developer. This book will take you from average to expert in the area that matters the most: making things more readable and more usable to more people.

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

Designing Inclusive Interactions contains the proceedings of the fifth Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT), incorporating the 8th Cambridge Workshop on Rehabilitation Robotics, held in Cambridge, England, in March 2010. It contains contributions from an international group of leading researchers in the fields of Universal Access and Assistive Technology. This conference will mainly focus on the following principal topics: 1. Designing assistive and rehabilitation technology for working and daily living environments 2. Measuring inclusion for the design of products for work and daily living 3. Inclusive interaction design and new technologies for inclusive design 4. Assembling new user data for inclusive design 5. The design of accessible and inclusive contexts: work and daily living environments 6. Business advantages and applications of inclusive design 7. Legislation, standards and government awareness of inclusive design

How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods—designing objects with rather than for excluded users—can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all. Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his “Wall of Exclusion,” which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called “sonification” so she can “listen” to the stars. Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.

Inclusive Design: What's in It for Me? presents a comprehensive review of current practice in inclusive design. With emphasis on new ideas for improvement and arguments for wider implementation in future, a unique combination of leading opinions on inclusive design from both industry and academia are offered. The theme throughout encourages a positive view of inclusive design as a good and profitable process and to produce a change to more effective approaches to "design for all". Inclusive Design is composed of two parts with a common chapter structure so that the business and design arguments in favour of inclusive design can be easily compared and assimilated: The Business Case presents the industrial and management benefits of inclusive design. It concentrates on demographic, legal and ethical reasons for all businesses being better off taking inclusivity into account in the design of their products or services. Case histories demonstrating the commercial success of inclusive design are drawn from the experiences of companies such as Tesco, Fiat and The Royal Mail. The Designers' Case focuses on the factors a designer needs to take into account when dealing with inclusivity. "Who is going to use my design?" "What do they need from my design?" "How do I take any medical needs into account?" "Just how "inclusive" is my design?" are all questions answered in this section which presents the necessary tools for effective inclusive design. This part of the book aims to convince a designer that inclusive design is a realistic goal. Inclusive Design will appeal to designers, researchers and students and to managers making decisions about the research and design strategies of their companies.