On Wednesday 6 March 2024 we heard insights from the speculative “Future Experiences” project by Glasgow School of Art students and a thought-provoking talk on accessibility by a seasoned professional.
The Next Normal: Exploring Future Experiences and Users in 2033
Future Experiences was a speculative project undertaken by 4th year Product Design students at the Glasgow School of Art, in collaboration with Glasgow University’s Advanced Research Centre.
With guidance from experts at the ARC, students were tasked with exploring life-centred design in 2033 under the themes of Health, Heritage and Habitat in the “living” and “working” domains.
The project had a particular focus on non-human users, how their circumstances may be different in the future and how this would change their coexistence with humans. This led to speculative exploration of what a user is.
Links
About the speakers
Patrick McCrum is a final-year product design student at GSA. His interests lie at the intersection of art, politics and design, particularly in how to provoke thought and change using unusual aesthetics.
Valentina Uribe is a final-year product design student at GSA. She is interested in junctures in design between craft culture, sustainable consumption and cross-cultural communications.
A more holistic approach to accessibility; considering intersectionality and lived experience
We often separate out different aspects of accessibility. However, it’s not uncommon for people to experience multiple barriers which compound each other. If we zoom in too much on solving a problem for one group of people, we can involuntarily make experiences less inclusive.
But, real people can’t descope parts of their lived experience. The complexity of real lived experiences still exists even if we don’t research or design for it.
You’ll come away from the talk with a more nuanced and human approach to accessibility which goes beyond compliance and is hopefully more effective and more true to how things really are.
Takeaways
- Our users are not one-dimensional people who experience one characteristic at a time.
- Different access needs and barriers can coexist in the same person.
- Needs and barriers co-occur, exacerbate, and interact with each other.
- We also often underestimate neurodiversity and sensory needs.
- People who seem quite similar on paper can be wildly different.
Links shared in the chat
- Designing for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy – GOV.UK Blog post
- Set of posters on how to design for accessibility – do and don’t
- It’s illegal to have an inaccessible website in Norway — and that’s good news for all of us (Medium)
- Vision Accessibility on Apple Vision Pro – by zmknox
About the speaker
Priyanca D’Souza is a Senior User Researcher in the public sector, specialising in Accessibility and Inclusion. She’s been experimenting with and using assistive technology since she was a teenager. This has involved a lot of creative problem-solving, openness and resilience. She can look at experiences through the lens of how access needs and assistive tech are going to interact with different touchpoints.
She aims to use her lived experience of access needs to embed inclusive practices within teams and drive forward inclusive and ethical design for users. Enabling people to empathise with the barriers our users can face and finding opportunities to alleviate and change things to make experiences better.
She is fascinated by the impacts different conditions can have on cognition, behaviour, people’s interactions and experiences of the world. She has a background in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, which she combines with lived and varied practical experience.
Follow Priyanca on Bluesky