P. John Clarkson – författare

Inclusive design, universal design and universal access are long standing, familiar terms with clear and laudable goals. However, their teaching and industrial uptake has been very limited. Many products still exclude users unnecessarily for reasons ranging from corporate insensitivity and the size of the market for inclusive products to the individual designer''s inability to design them.

This pragmatic approach to making inclusive design desirable to industry addresses these issues and discusses why existing methods have failed to be assimilated into industry. Through the use of case studies and examples, Countering Design Exclusion introduces the mind-set necessary to think through the challenges raised by inclusive design and to adapt their solutions to the needs of particular companies. The practical outlook will appeal to anyone who wishes to take account of the largest possible part of the population in their designs.

Rapid and unprecedented population ageing poses a serious social and economic challenge across the developed world. Shifts in dependency ratios point to escalating welfare and pensions costs which require radical and imaginative responses from Government and industry. Key to this is a healthy population able and willing to work longer before retirement and who can be independent for as long as possible afterwards as well as bringing disabled people into mainstream life and employment.

This book was stimulated by the 3rd CWUAAT workshop (the CWUAAT workshops have a general focus on product and solution development). It was held in Cambridge, UK in April 2006. Contributions from leading researchers focused on:

- design issues for a more inclusive world;

- enabling computer access and the development of new technologies;

- assistive technology and rehabilitation robotics; and,

- understanding users and involving them in design.

“Designing Inclusive Futures” reflects the need to explore, in a coherent way, the issues and practicalities that lie behind design that is intended to extend our active future lives. This encompasses design for inclusion in daily life at home but also extends to the workplace and for products within these contexts. For example, given trends in employment sector growth, skills requirements, labour supply and demographic change, there is a need to predict the critical areas where individual capabilities are mismatched with the physical, social and organisational demands of work. This mismatch, which can be addressed within the domain of inclusive design, is pervasively linked to real artefacts in workspaces and their intersection with the health factors that relate to ageing. This book is the result of the fourth CWUAAT workshop held in Cambridge, England in April 2008.

This book explores a process perspective on design and development, grounded in research in design studies, engineering design and systems design.

The design and development process is important---it creates all artificial products and systems and determines how well they address human needs. The process perspective set out in this book has value for design and development practice and education, and is in its own right a fascinating topic of investigation.

This book expands on the foundations of a process perspective and discusses its realisation in many process models, theories and approaches that have been developed over the years. The chapters provide connected overviews of key concepts and introduce new conceptual frameworks to clarify relationships between the contributions discussed. Practical considerations and competencies required to realise the tangible benefits of a process perspective are also discussed.

A unique aspect of this book is that itbrings together many perspectives on the design and development process: those that focus on individual design activity through to those that focus on large-scale development projects; those of research interest and those of practical interest; and those of relevance to design contexts ranging from human-centered design to engineering design and systems design. The chapter bibliographies collect carefully-selected recommendations for further reading on each topic discussed. The book additionally contains many figures presented in colour, visually reflecting each topic''s relationship to the new organising frameworks that are introduced.