Designing and Manufacturing for the Individual – 30th June, 2011

 

Convenors – Professor Peter Lansley and Dr Russell Marshall

The symposium aims to explore the role of an inclusive approach to design and manufacturing. It will bring together perspectives and experiences from product and industrial designers, architects, and other design professions, engineers, ergonomists, and urban planners, amongst others, to explore the implications of inclusive design for intelligent sustainable manufacturing. In particular the implications of an ageing population on design and manufacturing stakeholders, with a focus on end users and manufacturing and assembly workers, highlights the need for an inclusive approach to enable truly intelligent and sustainable manufacturing.  In taking an inclusive approach many questions can be posed.

Do compromises have to be made when designing and manufacturing products, facilities and systems for a population where individuals have a very wide range of abilities, if they are to be manufactured in an intelligent and sustainable manner?

Is the philosophy of intelligent and sustainable manufacturing more suited to customisation of products to meet individual needs?

How can manufacturing adapt to enable a sustainable approach to its ageing workforce?

Is inclusive design and manufacture just good design and manufacture?

These and other questions and challenges with be posed and discussed during the symposium.
After a scene setting introduction there will be a series of presentations providing important insights into some of the basic issues faced by those who are striving to design better living environments for people, in the home and in the urban environment, and more effective and attractive assistive technologies. The symposium will then consider what designers need to support the practice of inclusive design, especially in the context of product design and manufacturing, and how recent research is making major contributions to the development of new tools for designers. The symposium will then address the role of inclusive design through two perspectives – workforce ageing and user engagement, leading to some new perspectives on sustainable manufacture.  This will provide the platform for an extended discussion session which although considering a wide range of issues, will aim to identify routes to ensuring a future world of design and manufacturing which is both sustainable and inclusive of the needs of people of all levels of ability.

 

Programme

 

4:00pm – 4:05pm Welcome to the Symposium,

Peter Lansley, University of Reading, UK and Member, Advisory Committee, Centre for Rapid and Sustainable Product Development, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria

 

4:05pm – 4:15pm  Introduction,Russell Marshall, Loughborough University, UK
The context: the ageing population, disabled people, social inclusion, drivers for inclusive design, the challenges for research and practice.

 

(This session will set out some of the basic issues and context, this will help presenters to concentrate on their core material rather than needing to go over the basics and thus help avoid repetition of some of the fundamental issues.)

 

Presentations
(Each presenter will have a maximum of 10-12 minutes for their presentation, and two to five for discussion, they should concentrate on their core material as much of the background will have been given in the Introduction).

 

The challenges for individuals and designers

 

4:15pm – 4:30pm Home Environment: Light and Colour as a Phenomenon, Ana Cristina Lott Daré, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

 

4:30pm – 4:45pm How can we Manufacture Socially Inclusive Streets?, Rita Newton and Marcus Ormerod, University of Salford, UK

 

4:45pm – 5:00pm Self Low Cost Wheelchair Customization, Paulo C. R. Costa(1), Fernando Moreira Da Silva(2), and Carlos Figueiredo(2), (1)Polytechnic Institute of Guarda and (2)Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

 

Tools for Designers and Towards Manufacturing

 

5:00pm – 5:15pm Accessibility Evaluation: Assistive Tools for Design Activity in Product Development, E. Zitkus, P. Langdon and J Clarkson, University of Cambridge, UK

 

5:15pm – 5:30pm Workforce Ageing, the Need for an Inclusive Design Approach in Manufacturing Industry, Keith Case, Amjad Hussain, Russell Marshall, Stephen Summerskill, Ruth Sims and Diane Gyi, Loughborough University, UK

 

5:30pm – 5:45pm I did it My Way: User Engagement in Post-Industrial Manufacturing, Paul Atkinson(1), Justin Marshall(2), Ertu Univer(3), Lionel Dean(4), (1)Sheffield Hallam University, (2)University College Falmouth, (3)University of Huddersfield and (4)Freelance Design Consultant, UK

 

5:45pm – 6:30pm Discussion. Covering, for example: Further questions to the presenters, Co-creation, co-design, customisation and Inclusive Design, The role of practitioners in establishing Inclusive Design practice in manufacturing settings, How to move Inclusive Design towards Manufacturing and vice versa, Research priorities