I think there are two different concepts here -
universal (or at least world-wide) designs - turns up everywhere: like the
paperclip and the egg
and
Universal Design - design which is suitable for everyone: more specifically
the idea that stuff that is designed to be easy to use for people with
handicaps/difficulties turns out to be design which is easy to use for
everyone.
There is material about this approach at the University of Buffalo at
http://www.arch.buffalo.edu/~idea/publications/publications.html
and at the Centre for Universal Design at North Caroline State:
http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/
(A project on designing for the elderly a few years ago was titled
'designing for our future selves' which makes the point that this kind of
design helps everyone quite nicely, I thought).
An example from the work at Nottingham Trent: we used to run a graphics
project on design for the visually handicapped. A student did quite a lot of
user research with people with visual difficulties and came up with a list
of principles for effective graphics for this group. The class went through
this list carefully, and couldn't find any principle on it which wouldn't
also apply to effective graphics for people with perfect vision.
Going back to the paperclip and the egg (and John Gero's point about them
being different kinds of design is fair enough) although they're both
universal in the other sense, they are a diverse collection of generic
examples rather than particular designs (see Henry Petrowski for paperclip
examples). Would milk bottles (in the UK, at least) and wooden spoons be
similar examples?
Hugh Miller
Nottingham Trent University
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/soc/psych/miller/
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|