No description available.

Designing a school turned out to be far more enriching for me as an architect and as a person; it is a process that investigates the deep connection with one's childhood memories and helps in realizing how much impact the school environment has had on shaping the people we become. (In his book The Child, The City, The Artist) Aldo Van Eyck says: " In my beginning is my end … In my end is my beginning." The design of a school should be addressed as a place where childhood memories are created, where our understanding of play, social interaction, independence and awareness of ourselves and our architectural surrounding starts. It adds responsibility on the architect to make that space a perfect platform for learning, curiosity and creativity. As a child, going to school is a long process that may hold many obstacles. We can't imagine what it is like for someone on the Autism Spectrum. One to every 160 children in the world and one in every 59 children in the US are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD. This high rise in the number of ASD diagnosis should urge architects to think of providing the infrastructure for those children to grow and adequately engage in their communities. This group of schoolchildren have the ability to blend with other neuro-typical children if the school was supportive of this merge both administratively and architecturally. Coming from a country that does not have enough support for such children was a big motivation for my thesis. I felt that we as architects can play a major role in supporting them and even raising awareness about ASD. In my thesis I have designed a school encouraging the inclusivity of students with ASD where the architecture facilitates the co-existence of two groups of children that have different yet complementary capabilities. It is my firm belief that an architecture that can embrace the challenges of such a group of children enriches the social and intellectual growth of both groups simultaneously. / Master of Architecture / This project tackles the question of how architecture can help children on the Autism Spectrum interact with their social and built environment. The project is an elementary school that is designed taking into consideration sensory aspects like color, light, textures and sound. In my thesis I have designed a school encouraging the inclusivity of students with ASD where the architecture facilitates the co-existence of two groups of children that have different yet complementary capabilities. It is my firm belief that an architecture that can embrace the challenges of such a group of children enriches the social and intellectual growth of both groups simultaneously.

The importance of Web sites that can be accessed and used regardless of an individual?s disability is critical. One barrier to improved accessibility of Web sites relates to the gap between Web authors? technical knowledge of Web accessibility guidelines and a broader understanding of the challenges facing disabled people when interacting with Web sites.This thesis describes the development and evaluation of a Web accessibility auditing methodology with the dual aims of accurately identifying accessibility barriers present in a Web site, and presenting the audit findings and recommended actions in a way that informs, educates and engenders an improved understanding of accessibility amongst the audience.The methodology was piloted amongst a sample of Web sites, validated against other published accessibility evaluation methodologies, and adopted for subsequent audits carried out on a commercial basis. The impact on recipient organisations and individuals of a sample of 14 commercially commissioned audits was then evaluated. Audit recipients were surveyed, and each Web site audited evaluated to identify any changes to accessibility, and the presence of evidence of changes or improvements to accessibility strategy.Strong indications were found that the audits had a positive impact both on individuals and on the commissioning organisations. The audits were identified as having a particularly positive educational and motivational impact on recipients who did not identify themselves as having expertise in Web accessibility. There was also evidence that the design approach promoted by the audits had been adopted and applied by some of the commissioning organisations. The majority of respondents cited the recommendations for improvement as the most valuable feature of the audit. This illustrates a tension between the importance of presenting specific recommendations for actions and providing richer narrative accounts of evaluation stages to encourage a more holistic appreciation of accessibility.The particular benefits of the study are found in the identification of evidence of impact of commercially-commissioned Web accessibility audits over a period of time to recipients of varying characteristics. A number of areas for further investigation have been identified, focusing on investigating the potential value of the accessibility audit in providing more ?experiential? evaluation stages.

With housing in the UK responsible for over a quarter of all building related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the impact of occupant behaviour on such emissions. One area where occupant behaviour contributes largely towards emissions is space heating within domestic buildings. Despite technological improvements in the efficiency of heating systems, controls have become increasingly complex. Hence, there is a need to enable people to use their heating controls effectively in order to help reduce the associated CO2 emissions. This research found that significant numbers of people were excluded from using digital programmable thermostats, in particular people over 50 years old. The first study examined the scale of exclusion relating to digital programmable thermostats installed at a specific housing development. A second study explored in detail the reasons for exclusion from successfully programming a range of digital programmable thermostats. This was an in-depth usability study of heating controls that focused on the usability issues experienced by older people and was published in the Journal of Engineering Design. Based upon the outcomes of the first two studies a more inclusive heating control interface prototype was developed. The prototype demonstrated a reduction in both cognitive demands and associated user exclusion. Task success rates increased by 56.3% amongst older participants, and detailed energy modelling indicated that energy savings of 14.5-15.6% annually could be achievable. This work suggests that a more inclusive heating control interface could enable energy savings in the region of 15% through reducing the cognitive demands. Furthermore, this research challenges the existing paradigm and shows that inclusive design research may contribute to sustainable development in an environmental, as well as social, capacity.

An ageing population is demanding more of healthcare services worldwide, particularly for long-term conditions. In the UK, the challenge of limited healthcare service resources and the influence of the Equality Act on services have increasingly led to the consideration of people's access to community rehabilitation services. These present a potential opportunity for Inclusive Design. The literature suggests that Inclusive Design and its associated tools have been widely applied to the accessibility of buildings and public transport, as well as consumer products and services, but there is little evidence of their application to healthcare services. A review of the literature highlights the importance of improving people's access to community-based rehabilitation by providing care at or closer to home which has become an increasingly prevalent option to meet the healthcare demand for long-term conditions in an ageing population. Therefore, this thesis investigates how Inclusive Design can be applied to healthcare delivery services to improve patients' experiences of accessing these services. It accomplished this through two case studies: community-based rehabilitation services of back pain and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The case studies involved online surveys and interviews with healthcare professionals and patients in understanding the patients' care journeys and challenges in accessing these services. The impact of services demands on patients' capability and their access to services was analysed using an Inclusive Design tool, the Exclusion Calculator. An inclusive approach integrating tools and procedures was summarised to facilitate the understanding of patients' capability-related needs both for the recipients of care and for the providers of care. This research provides a novel contribution by filling the gaps in the literature on the application of Inclusive Design to healthcare delivery services, i.e., community-based rehabilitation. It demonstrates that an Inclusive Design approach can be used to improve people's access to healthcare services and the tools applied can make a useful contribution to understanding service provision and hence service improvement. The Inclusive Design approach focuses on identifying the demands that healthcare services make of their users' capability and in estimating services' exclusion. The process of applying Inclusive Design in this research may be used to improve other healthcare services.

Technological innovation is increasingly contributing to the development of smart objects, meant as semi-autonomous devices augmented by sensing, processing and network capabilities that facilitate older adults being independent and in control of a healthy lifestyle. Given the lessened familiarity that the ageing population has with internet-based technologies, a 'digital divide' among generations is often observed. This research is premised on the basis that design interventions can develop intuitive and understandable smart objects minimising age-related differences and promote a greater technology adoption. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the understandability of smart objects for the ageing population could be supported through the application, at the product design level, of Smart Materials (SMs), a category of engineered materials whose properties can be designed to both stimulate human sensorial abilities and to develop engaging experiences. In line with such research enquiry, SMs are adopted in this thesis for their ability to embody 'analogies' and 'metaphors' into product designs and systematically stimulate the prior knowledge and memories of older adults to facilitate their understanding of new concepts, following the principle of 'familiarity'. Analogies and metaphors, powerful learning tools for written, verbal and visual communication, have been recently investigated as 'non-linguistic' tools, when physically embedded into product designs, to facilitate the users' understanding how technology works. How non-linguistic metaphors help to cope with age-related differences is still incomplete. In order to demonstrate that embodied SMs can minimise differences in the understandability of technologies across generations, a qualitative and exploratory study was conducted; empirical evidence was collected through four techniques to accomplish the following objectives: 1. identify critical areas that affect older adults' everyday life and that smart objects should cope with; 2. define a set of embodied Smart Materials to be included into the prototype of a Smart Radio, a novel communicative device specifically design for the ageing population; 3. evaluate the prototype of the Smart Radio, where age-related similarities and differences in the interpretation are made explicit. 62 participants (n=31 under-60-year-old and n=31 over-60-year-old participants) evaluated the developed Smart Radio, the main evaluation study conducted in this thesis, using four different families of SMs. Findings reveal that embodied SMs considerably help mitigate age-related differences in the understanding of smart objects; this in return may increase the chance of technology adoption among ageing users. The embodiment of Smart Materials that enable metaphorical processing shows promising improvements on the older adult's ability to reaffirm their own subjective awareness, hence control, of the world around them along with opportunities for a human-centred technology development.

The largest age group in western society, the baby boomers, was born between 1943 and 1964, considering different definitions for the time span. All these people have an age between 62 and 48 years old. The life expectancy of these people is the highest in history and they will be more and more willing to stay independent as long as possible. The core of independence is being able to provide and take care of oneself. In order to do that, the instruments that surround the person have to be adjusted to the needs of the person and aid as much as possible. This is the report of a Bachelor Degree Project that has the intention to develop a kitchen accessible for all people, both people with full ability and people with limited capabilities, using the inclusive design toolkit. At the same time it has to be appealing enough that people without limited capabilities also enjoy the use of this kitchen, this will be pursued by applying the pleasure design methodology. Apart from the objective to come up with a kitchen concept, attention will be given to study, compare and discuss the relation and compatibility between different methods and design philosophies.   The project resulted in a conceptual kitchen aimed to be suitable for nearly all people. The design was approached through various angles to obtain a broad variety of solutions, which was combined into one kitchen concept, to comply with the demands that a future user may have. The main aspects taken upon are the layout, storage solutions that require minimum effort and a stove and sink solution. The kitchen concept complies with the predetermined requirements set forth in the project specifications. Extra attention was put into the storage methods. Not necessarily in the amount, although most space was taken advantage of, but in the ways the user can use the storage spaces. The stove and sink are located on a height-adjustable platform for maximum comfort and adaptation to the user. The layout was determined according to the space needed for mobility, storage and function.

Inclusive Design is a concept that aims to design mainstream products, workplaces, services and facilities that can accommodate or `include' a maximum percentage of the user population disregarding their age and/or disabilities. The main idea behind Inclusive Design is to design products or workplaces that can be used by all including older, disabled and able-bodied people rather than having two streams of products. There are many social and economic benefits in achieving inclusivity in design such as improving the life of the elderly and disabled people and reaping the profits from the market that extend because of the increased number of consumers. Origins of Inclusive Design go back several decades and are due mainly to the demographic, legislative, and social as well as economic changes that occurred during this period. This research was conducted to study methods of implementation of Inclusive Design. The research has shown that although there are many advantages of designing for the whole population, designers are reluctant to do this mainly because of the enormity of the task which can take up a huge amount of time and man-power. One solution to this can be found in design tools, which provide the designers with a means to achieve inclusivity relatively quickly and with less effort. Therefore this research has developed a new methodology and a computer tool to assist designers to implement Inclusive Design with ease. The methodology discussed in this thesis incorporates the physical characteristics of the users of products and workplaces in the design process in order to search for better configurations for designs. It is shown here that by considering the physical aspects of the individual users such as their anthropometry, joint constraints, capabilities etc in a design optimisation process, the percentage user accommodation of a product can be maximised. In order to achieve this, ergonomics analysis methods and mathematical methods were used to interpret user characteristics in terms of design variables and then constraint modelling was used to model the whole design problem and search for better solutions within the constraints of the design. To implement this method a software tool called SHIELDS was created. This tool utilises the capabilities of four other pieces of software to accomplish the design synthesis. These are HADRIAN and SAMMIE for ergonomics evaluation and MATHEMATICA for mathematical functions fitting and SWORDS constraint modeller to find best solutions. Two case studies were performed to test the functionality of the software and the validity of the methodology developed.

Over 60% of the adult population in the United Kingdom is now overweight or obese or classed as plus size . This is higher than almost all other developed countries in the world. Even with numerous public health interventions, the incidence of being plus size continues to rise potentially changing the demographics of the working population. This presents a challenge to those involved in workplace design as the design process relies upon the utilization of appropriate anthropometric data to establish the percentage of the user population that will be accommodated by the design. The aim of this thesis is to identify issues affecting plus size people in the working environment, not previously explored within the literature. Furthermore, by understanding the size and shape of this population via the collection of key anthropometric data, this will help inform the design of safe, comfortable, inclusive and productive working environments for plus size people within the United Kingdom. A first stage Scoping Study (n=135) found that fit (equipment, tools, furniture, uniforms and personal protective equipment) and space (circulation and shared spaces within the working environment) were issues of concern to plus size people. This suggests that aspects of the current design of the workplace are not suitable, and may even exclude plus size people. A better understanding of the anthropometric requirements of plus size workers is therefore required. Self-reported anthropometric data is an acceptable way of studying large and geographically diverse populations and may assist in accessing the hard to reach plus size working population. A validation study (n=20) established that self measurement of 14 key anthropometric measurements, using a self measurement instruction guide, was a feasible and acceptable data collection method for a larger scale anthropometric study to further understand the body size and shape of plus size people at work. A unique measure of knee splay (for a non-pregnant population) was included. Defined as the distance between the outer borders of the knees whilst seated in the preferred sitting position it represents the observed sitting postures of plus size individuals not captured in existing anthropometric data sources. The larger scale Plus Size Anthropometry Study (n=101) collected anthropometric data of plus size working age people via self measurement. The findings indicated that the study population was substantially larger in circumference, depth and breadth measurements than the population of existing anthropometric data sources. Knee splay was also identified as a key anthropometric variable for plus size people, however, it is not included in any datasets or literature relating to plus size people at work. These factors may contribute to high exclusion rates from current design practices that seek to accommodate the 5th to 95th or 99th percentile of users and may explain the high incidence of fit and space issues reported by participants with a BMI over 35kg/m2 . Finally, semi structured interviews with stakeholders (n=10) explored how they would like the data from the plus size anthropometry study communicated and any additional requirements of a resource aimed at supporting stakeholders in meeting the needs of plus size people within the working environment. The primary concern from stakeholders was the lack of existing data on the size and shape of the plus size working population and the importance of access to such data in whatever format. A range of ideas were suggested including case studies, guidance and access to training which may assist them in understanding the needs of their end users ultimately supporting the inclusion of plus size people in workplace design.

This thesis focuses on creating an interactive installation as immersive experience for hearing-impaired user. To date, little research has been conducted especially on interactive (sound) installation for impaired visitors, particularly these visitors with hearing impairments or who are hard-of hearing. Based on literature research and a case study, a new lighting design proposal was developed for Soundforest, an interactive musical installation at Scenkonstmuseet in Stockholm, Sweden. The audio-experience is enhanced ambient lighting, which alters in brightness depending on the interaction of visitors. For evaluation, a prototype was set up in the installation space and tested by one participant. The first testing leads to the assumption that the additional layer of ambient lighting can enhance the emotional experience of the visitors. The results show that the test person had great pleasure in interacting with the prototype. Still, to develop a full picture of the consequences and emotional effects, additional research is required.