I had an interesting time on the judging panel for this years Helen Hamlyn 24 hour design challenge, which has returned to London after a few years in Hong Kong and elsewhere.  The idea behind the challenge is quite simple: bring a group of designers together with a ‘design partner’,  a person disabled in some way, give them a brief and put them in a room for 24 hours. At the end of this time everyone reconvenes and presents their solution to the brief. The aim is to show that by designing inclusively the result is better products for all.

When I took part with Factorydesign around five years ago, most of the solutions from the teams were physical products of some kind, ranging from a universal suitcase system to headphones full of instructions. But of course, that was just before the iPhone and apps really hit the world – this year nearly all of the solutions were app based, or had that technology at their core. Perhaps this reflects how useful a smartphone can be to a disabled person, from acting as a magnifying glass to finding the nearest pub with disabled access – the information is right there on screen and can even be read out. One of the teams in fact identified that many difficulties faced by people are actually already solved by such technology, it’s just that the technology itself is foreign or unknown to those people, and their solution was simply to create a space where people can go and find out about it all!

One thing that seems to consistently come out of the challenge is the realisation of just how difficult the world can be when seen (or not) through the eyes of a disabled person, and how easily it can be improved for all just by taking those considerations into account during the design process. At the end of the day even modern, up to date technology can be completely baffling to all but those of the highest I.Q – you only need to watch the faces of people using  ticket machines at train stations to watch a complicated interface in action! The ‘Peoples Choice’ challenge winner was actually an appendage to existing technology that can recognise the user through chip-and-pin style technology on a card, and adjust the interface according to their preferences – but in a way for me this merely highlights how interfaces can often be much simplified and still work just as well, if not better.

Our winning choice as judges was actually not a solution to a problem at all. It was a game, Street Wheels, where the idea is to navigate your way through an urban environment using a selection of different wheeled transport, ranging from roller blades to a wheelchair. Along the way you have to tackle badly designed curbs, door ways and other such obstructions, and with each successful level you gain the skills necessary to approach your next set of wheels until you reach the ultimate skill; wheelchair master. Their stated aim was to be more popular than Angry Birds – thus creating an unparalleled awareness of wheels in the urban environment!

To read more about what the Helen Hamlyn center gets up to click here or read Lynda’s blog to see her view on it!