Inclusive Design Toolkit

An inclusive design training workshop can give your company a head start in understanding inclusive design, and how to turn it into commercial success. Various length workshops are available ranging from half a day to two days, and can be tailored to your particular needs. Most of our courses tend to be run in-house for a specific company. However, we do occasionally run courses open to the general public, depending on demand.

The workshops are run by members of the Engineering Design Centre (EDC), at Cambridge University’s Engineering Department. Trainers have expertise in inclusive design concepts and tools, as well as in running training exercises with people from industry and academia.

The workshops include a mix of presentations, small group exercises and discussions. Participants are introduced to main concepts for inclusive design and the principles of how to turn inclusive design into commercial success. They are taught to carry out an initial inclusive design assessment on an everyday product or service. Longer workshops use the tools within a real design exercise that is pertinent to the participants.

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We have successfully run workshops for a diverse range of attendees, including:

• Directors and senior managers responsible for Inclusion and diversity, Industrial design, User experience, Ergonomics, Customer satisfaction and Product innovation
• Researchers working in the fields of Human Computer Interaction, Usability, Ergonomics and Accessibility
• Designers, brand specialists, marketers, purchasing specialists and product developers
• Charities and government organisations

The workshop programme varies depending on the particular needs of the group and the length of the workshop. The following is the programme for a typical 2-day workshop.

Day 1

• Inclusive design overview
• Understanding human capabilities
• Introduction to inclusive design tools
• Audit of real example
• Exclusion audit exercise
• Dinner at a Cambridge college

Day 2

• Understanding customer needs
• Ideation
• Concept generation and evaluation
• Making the business case
• Concept presentations

The workshops are run by members of the Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre (EDC). In particular, speakers include Ian Hosking and Mike Bradley, described below.

Ian Hosking has over 20 years of experience of working in industry with a focus on the effective application of technology through understanding people’s needs. He was involved in the initiation and development of the Inclusive Design Toolkit, which provides resources to enable businesses to design inclusively. This has been adopted by various companies and has been accessed from over 170 countries worldwide. Ian joined the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge University in 2009 and was responsible for promoting inclusive design in the UK as part of the KT-EQUAL programme. This work has included the Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) initiative that has seen the development of educational resources for teaching inclusive design in secondary schools. His interests include the convergence of inclusive and sustainable design. He is also a Fellow of the RSA.

Mike Bradley is a Senior Research Associate in the Inclusive Design Group at the Engineering Design Centre at Cambridge University. He is interested in how applying Inclusive Design principles to product and service design improves the user experience for mainstream users, and is currently researching digital exclusion and inclusive interfaces for autonomous vehicles. Prior to that he was Head of Human Factors for Ford in Europe and responsible for the ergonomics of the original Ford Focus, and then for all Ford vehicles designed in Europe. He led The Third Age Driver research project into the needs of older drivers, resulting in the ‘Third Age Suit’ as an empathy device for designers and engineers. For the Third Age Project and its application to the design of the Ford Focus, he received an award from the UK’s Automobile Association.

Workshops can be run at your own venue, or at a venue at the University of Cambridge. The cost for the workshop will vary depending on the number of attendees, the venue required and the length of the course. As an indication, a two-day training workshop hosted at Cambridge University costs £20,000 plus VAT.

As these workshops can be tailored to each company’s particular needs, please contact edc-toolkit@eng.cam.ac.uk to discuss options.