Designing a World for Everyone: 30 years of Inclusive Design

The way we experience the world is largely through the design of the places, products, communications, services, and systems we encounter every day. Over the past 30 years, however, there has been a shift in designing to become more empathic and inclusive of different human needs. The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art first pioneered the concept of inclusive design in the early 1990s and it has gone on to build an extensive portfolio of collaborative projects over a long period, developing new methods, coaching designers at all levels in the approach, and bringing a more inclusive way of thinking about design to international attention. This book shows the parameters of inclusive design through the lens of the centre’s own projects in the field. It therefore maps a movement and, at the same time, marks a milestone: the 30th anniversary of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in 2021. 30 everyday artefacts and environments are explored. These vary in scale: some are simple, hand-held objects, while others form part of large and complex environments or systems. Some have reached the market, others we can file under ‘ideas for the future.’