About the nature of design in universal design

Abstract

Purpose: Studies suggest that the concept of universal design (UD) is not widely accepted and that some of its ideas are received rather sceptically. This article confronts the concept of UD with prevailing notions and practices of design. It examines how UD can be situated relative to design in general, and explores whether elements in the nature of design can help us explain this scepticism. Methods: The article confronts writings about how design is understood with the concept and ideas of UD. This confrontation is substantiated with examples from studies of design processes in architectural design practice. Results: The confrontation highlights the ambiguity of how UD is framed and presented, ranging from an attitude over something utopian to a normative design domain. Conclusions: (1) Besides UD other attitudes are thinkable that address the diversity in human abilities and conditions. (2) The impossibility to really design for everyone may be inherent to design rather than characteristic of UD. (3) Even if UD as a normative design domain were a top priority, the question remains how to assess whether a design is universally usable given the nature of design (problems), and prevailing design practices.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Understanding disability as originating in the interaction between features of an individual's body and features of his/her environment, as universal design does, implies that rehabilitation specialists need to consider the context in which a person lives.

• Besides striving for independence, self-reliance and individualism, rehabilitation specialists may consider other attitudes to address the diversity in human abilities and conditions.

• Designers do not have direct access to the perspective of the people they design for. Assessing whether a design is universally accessible may benefit from expertise of rehabilitation specialists.

• Architectural design
• design research
• universal design

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Margo Annemans, Stijn Baumers, Koen Coomans, Greg Nijs, Jeandonné Schijlen, Caroline Van Doren, Iris Van Steenwinkel and Peter-Willem Vermeersch for the many discussions which have informed my ideas for this article. I would also like to thank guest editors Rob Imrie and Rachael Luck and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1 At that time these included three university programs and three professional programs.

2 Other authors have confronted universal design with a critical theory paradigm [6], or with informational and market issues [7].

3 The notion of “user” is subjected to criticism in design research. Focusing on just the “users” of a product may ignore the needs of others affected by its design; see e.g. [8]. Moreover, the term “user” reflects a tendency to objectify people as “test subjects” rather than human beings with a context, lifestyle and desires that go beyond their physical representation; see [9]. Aware of this critique, in this article I use the term “users” as a shorthand for “people whom designers design for”.

4 The study took place between February 2008 and February 2009. The individual interviews with program directors or their representatives and the focus group interview with teachers were semi-structured and based on open questions. The document analysis of the program guides and other documents describing the program turned out to contain very little information about UD. Even for the programs that had already implemented UD, it was difficult to tell from the program guides. Implementation and (especially) vision were hardly made explicit in these documents. Therefore, the findings reported here are based primarily on the interviews. Note that the views reported here are those expressed by the interviewees and not necessarily shared by the author. A more detailed description of the study, its set-up and results can be found in [1].

5 The interviews were conducted as part of a study that aimed at exploring as many aspects and nuances of a healing environment as possible. In this context, a group discussion was conducted with four users of the Maggie's London (three cancer patients and one whose husband died of cancer), and an interview was conducted with the associate at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners who lead the design and building of the centre. Both were audio recorded, transcribed and coded using qualitative data analysis software (Atlas.ti). First the group discussion was processed using open codes. With the results of this first analysis in mind, the interview with the architect was coded according to these categories. For more details about the study, see [23].

6 The aim of this case study was to gain nuanced insights in how an architect's original intentions are experienced by (disabled) users, and demonstrate how such insights may enrich our understanding of architecture. Museum M was selected as a case for two reasons: (a) it is a well-known piece of contemporary architecture: since its opening, it has been praised as an important work of architecture by the professional press, and attracts a large volume of visitors; and (b) the architect and his team paid explicit attention to persons with an impairment from the early design decisions on. The case study relied on multiple methods and sources: inventory and analysis of publications about M, and interviews with the project architect, in order to fully grasp the architects' conceptions of the museum; interviews with M's architecture guide, who is confronted with the building and its visitors on a daily basis; and visits to the museum accompanied by a wheelchair user and a vision impaired person in order to gain access to (disabled) visitors' experiences. For more details about the case study, its methods and results, see [30].

7 The study of Pereira's design practice is based on interviews with him and his coworkers, analysis of his design tools and participant observation of building visits by him. For more details about the study, its methods and results, see [38].

8 A similar evolution can be observed in the work of Christopher Downey, an American architect who also lost his sight and continued designing afterwards. Even more than for Pereira, for Downey the process of becoming blind related first and foremost to acknowledging and overcoming a visual bias in his earlier work. Since he lost his sight, sensory richness for Downey means not only expanding his attention to different senses, but also striving for differentiation in acoustic, tactual or visual qualities an sich. See [38].

9 Two researchers were involved in the ethnographic study: one with a background in social sciences, observed the design practice “from outside” while the second one, with a background in architecture, acted as member of the design team and experienced the design process first-hand through participant observation. The study employed a variety of data collection methods, including direct observation, video recording, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of documents and artefacts, such as the design brief, drawings, etc. This yielded a very rich data set, including 25 h of audio and 66 h of video recordings captured during 21 design team meetings; site visits and follow-up meetings, and 284 design documents used and/or produced by the five team members. For more details about the study, its methods and results, see [42].

10 This question is actually a particular case of a very general question that is relevant to every activity exhibiting normative dimensions: where are standards to be set? And who is in charge of the issue? For a more in-depth discussion of this general question, see [48].