10th DBA Inclusive Design Challenge.
By Jason Mesut 10 Mar 2010.
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I attended the 10th DBA Inclusive Design Challenge Awards at the RCA last night and was intrigued to see a blend of concepts designed to address the challenges of an ageing population. The theme was named “Active Ageing” and described as ‘designing for our future selves and looks at the challenges of our growing ageing population remaining active and productive in later life’.
With an ever-increasing rate of ageing population growth, it was great to see solutions designed to make a positive impact to so many who often get excluded from a designer’s focus.
What was really interesting to me, however, was the range of technology-enabled solutions on offer, ranging from the Wiki-based ‘Footnote’ tool that allows community members to annotate any site to make it easier for fellow members to use, through to a radical portable table surface that can be placed anywhere and adapt to its surroundings to grip firmly into place and to snugly support all matter of objects placed upon it. The latter example was about 10-15 years too far ahead of itself, but it’s good that someone’s thinking ahead for when we all get older. The other solutions were far more feasible for delivery now. In fact, many of the ideas have been developed in one way or another before, but it was the problem of ageing and the older generation that they were solving that was interesting.
As a designer, passionate about involving real end users in the design process, it was great to see so many primary-research examples in the presentations around the award entries. Mostly in the form of video interviews of usability tests or focus groups, but sometimes in the form of scenarios played out with real characters based on research. This truly demonstrated how a bit of quick research can help challenge assumptions, guide creativity and invigorate the design team and the potential client (in this case the audience of the awards).
The winning entry was delivered by Clinic, and was named ‘Sage & Onions’ – referring to the Sage wisdom of experience, and younger generations knowing their onions. It was described as an experience exchange – ‘an initiative to encourage people of all ages to trade experiences and skills’ where people could trade their skills through the use of a website and build up associated loyalty points for their efforts. This isn’t necessarily a new model in itself, but what was presented was not only a website where people could learn new skills from others offering them, but actually an integrated service with cheeky direct marketing, merchandise, packaging design and above the line advertising leading the user into a digital environment which connects people up based on their learning needs and encourages real face-to-face social interaction. Not only that, but the service was designed to be free for users, funded by advertising and government investment. This is the sort of solution that the new breed of service designers might go crazy about, and something which I think pushed the judges' buttons.
It would be great to see this idea get some real funding and be put into action – it’s definitely a timely idea, and for once, it would be good to see one of these award-winning concept ideas actually making a difference in the real world rather than teasing the design industry with the idea of thinking in such a way.
