Our BdB team are busy planning our next inclusive design workshop collaboration between SACD and SCME. The focus for our next workshop is digital inclusivity. Typography students will be engaging with user experience of digital platforms in relation to issues like manual dexterity and colour blindness. Christina Duckett and Jeanne-Louise Moys will co-facilitate the workshop, which feeds directly into an assessed project for which typography students are designing recipe apps.

Our BdB team is thrilled to have been awarded funding for a field visit to an inclusive urban design project during Enhancement Week this term.

This proposal contributes to our strategy to embed inclusive design teaching and learning within relevant programmes across the University. It involves a structured site visit to The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London hosted by David Bonnett Associates, an inclusive design consultancy which advised on the redevelopment project. The visit will include an introductory lecture on inclusive design principles and practice by David Bonnett and colleague, followed by a group exercise to explore the accessibility issues that faced the project team during the design and development of the project.

The visit will support the inter-disciplinary ethos of the BdB project by allocating spaces to students from real estate and planning, building and construction and graphic design, and prospective students in architecture. The project work at the Roundhouse will be organised in similar inter-disciplinary teams, and involve design analysis, creative problem solving and group brain-storming and discussion. The project will offer undergraduate students from SBE, SACD and REP an exciting opportunity to collaborate and broaden their understanding of how different disciplines engage and contribute to the production of inclusivity in design.

Another innovative aspect of the proposal is that offer-holders for the new BSc programme in Architecture will also be invited to attend the site visit, thereby introducing them to aspects of inclusive architectural design and inter-disciplinary working before joining the course.

Congratulations and thanks in particular to Joe Doak who put forward the proposal and is organising the visit.

Congratulations to Geoff Cook and Christina Duckett who have been awarded funding from the Bowen Jenkins Legacy Research Fund for our Breaking down Barriers curriculum project.

More information about the award is available here.

This term Christina Duckett, Geoff Cook and Paul Luna are leading our embedding visual inclusion into the Design Thinking module for part 2 BA Graphic Communication students through a series of experiential learning workshops.

The first workshop focused on increasing student awareness of visual acuity. Christina and Paul encouraged our typography students to define the meaning of inclusive design, to consider who benefits from an inclusive approach to design, to reflect on the importance of such an approach, and to begin to consider what represents good practice. Using the SEE-iT mobile phone prototype, the students evaluated their own visual acuity and the visual inclusivity of typography in a range of documents.

In the second workshop, students wore glasses which simulate various visual impairments and explored the ease of wayfinding around the University campus. They also assessed the legibility of packaging of grocery items, with some interesting results!

We have built into the module reflection exercises for students to engage with how Breaking down Barriers workshops are changing their understanding of inclusivity and enabling them to apply inclusivity to their design practice.

Future sessions will complement simulation exercises and will involve real users.

BdB team members Christina Duckett and Joe Doak with Professor Gavin Brooks

Christina Duckett (School of the Built Environment) and Joe Doak (School of Real Estate & Planning) joined Professor Gavin Brookes (Pro Vice Chancellor) at a special reception for the Built Environment Professional Education (BEPE) project at London City Hall on 2^nd December 2015. Our Reading team were there to showcase the Breaking down Barriers initiative which is seeking to integrate inclusive design into built environment programmes across the University.

The BEPE project is about embedding inclusive design into the initial and continuing education of built environment professionals to help make inclusive design the norm, business as usual, in all development projects. The work of the BdB project was highlighted by Professor Brooks who overviewed the range of activities being undertaken to introduce UoR students to the importance of designing, building and managing an inclusive environment for all users.

Munira Mirza, Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture of London, introduces Professor Brooks

Professor Gavin Brooks presenting our BdB project

Our BdB team would like to thank the University TEL team who have helped us set up a Blackboard organisation for the project. The organisation provides us with an online hub to share resources on inclusive design across the three schools participating in our BdB project. It also provides a range of interactive tools for collaboration and sharing of ideas and projects for students enrolled on our different degree programmes and will be a valuable way for us to share, evaluate and review our T&L initiatives.

Suha Jaradat has left the University of Reading and moved on to a new, exciting role at Kingston. Our BdB team wishes her every success in her new role and look forward to creating and exploring new opportunities to collaborate with her on inclusive projects. Good luck, Suha!

Breaking down Barriers has kicked off the academic year with a workshop in inclusive design with our new Part 1 typography students. Today we had our first session for the BA Graphic Communication Integrated Design Methods module. The students engaged with the new SEE-IT sight exclusive prototype for assessing visual inclusion/exclusion (currently being developed by the University of Cambridge as a new addition to their inclusive design toolkit). Working in pairs, they measured visual inclusion of typographic elements in business cards, leaflets and mobile apps.

The workshop was an engaging way of introducing typography students to the task-based learning approach used in this module. It also provided an effective introduction to inclusive design and the kinds of factors designers need to consider in their decision-making. The module focuses on user-centred design applied to a range of genres including: editorial design (‘design for reading’), pictograms and wayfinding, and digital design.

Typography lecturers Rob Banham and Jeanne-Louise Moys facilitated the workshop. We hope our students will continue to use inclusive design tools to support their decision-making in practical projects throughout their degree. It was also a great way to enrich the student experience with technology-enhanced learning.

Our thanks to Joy Goodman-Deane and Sam Waller who introduced us to the tool at Include2015 and gave us permission to use their prototype in our teaching.

Typography students Theo and Stephen team up to measure the ex/inclusivity of leaflet designs.

Typography student Polina setting up to measure ex/inclusivity in cover design.

Typography students Kash and Kundai calibrating their phones to measure visual inclusivity.

Typography students Amber and Orla evaluating the visual ex/inclusivity of capitalised letters on business cards.

Christina and Jeanne-Louise presented our poster about Breaking down Barriers at Include 2015 earlier this month. They also participated in a range of exciting inclusive design workshops. One of our highlights was the tactile mapping workshop – here’s Christina collaborating with Junko (right) and Yasuyuki (centre) from Kyushu University in Japan.