Speakers

Read about the speakers at the European Business Conference on Inclusive Design 2008.

Day 1 - May 5th, 2008

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Jeremy Myerson

Director

Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, London

Discovery Through Design: How design methods take you closer to the customers at the front end of innovation

In his presentation, Jeremy Myerson will set out the case for inclusive design as a valuable innovation technique in the context of the globalisation of business. As many innovation processes go offshore to lower-cost economies, European companies need to up their game as the front end of innovation where consumer insights are discovered and new ideas unearthed. Working with 'extreme users' through an inclusive approach can help businesses learn more about their customers and design for their real needs.

About Jeremy Myerson

Jeremy Myerson has been a writer, researcher, academic and activist in European design for the past 25 years. He developed his interest in design and innovation as a journalist and in1986 he was founding editor of Design Week, the world's first weekly newspaper for designers. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, he joined RCA in 1999 to set up the Helen Hamlyn Centre as a focus for inclusive design and people-centred innovation within the College. Today he is Director of the centre and Professor of Design Studies at the RCA, where he also leads the InnovationRCA network for business. He is the author of many books including IDEO: Masters of Innovation and Rewind: 40 Years of Design and Advertising. He has consulted widely with business on design and innovation projects in Europe and the States.

About Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre

The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre provides a focus for people-centred design and innovation at the RCA in London, the world's only wholly postgraduate university institution of art and design.The centre was set up by Roger Coleman and Jeremy Myerson in January 1999 to explore the design implications of social and demographic change. Today, its multi-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, architects and anthropologists undertake practical research and projects with industry. The centre is endowed by the Helen Hamlyn Trust and has worked with many global businesses including Ford, Unilever, Steelcase, Hewlett Packard, GlaxoSmithKline and Philips.

Read more about The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre >>

KEYNOTE SPEAKER ON MOVING

Akihiro Nagaya

General Manager, Design Development Division

TOYOTA, Japan

Aiming at a Sustainable Society

An aging society and decrease in the birthrate together with environmental issues are increasingly important and relevant worldwide. TOYOTA has been enhancing their measures regarding technology development to achieve a “sustainable society”. TOYOTA would like to introduce their efforts from products that embody UD and barrier-free, to personal mobility and partner robot proposals.

About Toyota

TOYOTA is a company that has been aiming to enrich society through car making. The goal is to be a "good corporate citizen," constantly winning the trust and respect of the international community.

Read more about TOYOTA >>

Olav Rand Bringa

Consultant

The Ministry of Children and Equality

Design for all – a sensible and viable idea. Why should governments interfere?

Olav Rand Bringa is a consultant in The Ministry of Children and Equality and has been involved in developing and conducting Norwegian action plans for accessibility and universal design. He has a Master of Science degree from The Norwegian University of Technology in Trondheim. Bringa has published a number of books and articles, mainly on the subjects of accessibility and universal design and has served as an international consultant in Europe and The Middle East.

Day 2 - May 6th, 2008

BUSINESS BREAKFAST SEMINAR
 

Rama Gheerawo

Innovation Manager & Research Fellow

Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre, London

Inclusive relationships: how academia, industry and designers work together in the UK

Historically, inclusive design knowledge transfer between academia and industry has been difficult to achieve. Expectations, outcomes, timetables and finance structures can be very different. The Helen Hamlyn Centre’s Research Associates Programme has done pathfinding work in this area. It teams new Royal College of Art design graduates with industry partners to work on inclusive design projects that deliver real results in a business context on a yearly basis. Rama, who leads the programme, will talk through the challenges of implementing and managing these relationships, delivering key insights from his experience and illustrating this with examples. Since 1999, over 65 companies from a range of market sectors have explored the value of inclusive design by participating in the programme including many household names such as Toyota, Intel and Levi Strauss.

About Rama Gheerawo

Rama Gheerawo is an Innovation Manager and Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre where he leads a team of creative minds working on inclusive design innovation projects for business clients and industrial partners on the Research Associates Programme.

Rama is trained as a designer, engineer and an academic. He has wide experience in the creative industry having worked in the automotive, product design, multimedia design and design engineering sectors. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 2005 for his work in inclusive design and regularly writes, publishes, lectures and talks on the subject to a variety of audiences including students, academics, designers, industry and government. Rama joined the Centre at its inception in 1999 and is part of the team responsible for developing it to the position it holds today.

Read more about the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre >>

LIVING

Alison Wright

Managing Director

Easy Living Home Ltd, UK

Creating and marketing inclusively designed kitchens and bathrooms – an Interior Design Company’s perspective

The interior design of our homes is important to us all and particularly when considering kitchens and bathrooms. For Alison Wright, design research findings were a key driver behind her range of inclusively designed kitchens and bathrooms. This presentation explores the transition pathways from the original research findings which inspired the designs, to the business model and final market proposition of ‘Living Works’, her new bathroom brand for Graham Group.

About Alison Wright and Easy Living Home Ltd

Alison Wright is a respected British Interior Designer in the field of ‘inclusive’ design (KBB Review 2007 double award winner for kitchen & bathroom design & runner-up FX ID Award 2006). Her company Future Proof Home Ltd., developed under the Easy Living Home concept was established in 2000, as the result of research Alison undertook during her 7 years as a part-time Research Fellow with the Helen Hamlyn Centre. This has given her an in-depth understanding of the emerging marketplace of consumers aged 50+ which she draws upon in her work with UK manufacturers and housing professionals.

In 2006 Alison was approached by UK Plumbing Supplier Graham Group (Division of Saint Gobain) to develop a new brand of bathrooms to attract consumers aged 50+, which culminated in the launch of the ‘Living Works’ brand in July 2007. Alison’s has also presented her work nationally and internationally and on BBC television.

www.easylivinghome.co.uk

LIVING

Matthew White

Design Consultant

B&Q, UK

Inclusive Product Innovation

Inclusive Design aims to broaden the number of people who can comfortably use products. The widening of a products user base is of course one of the key aims of commercial business. Retailers can be an ideal partner for inclusive design due to their direct user focus and ability to draw on a wide range of suppliers for product sourcing. Matthew will draw on his experience over the last 8 years of working with B&Q Plc. B&Q, Europe’s largest DIY retailer, has an inclusive focus in all areas of its business. Matthew will outline the broader inclusive policies of B&Q and also detail the process that has resulted in his inclusive products being sold in B&Q.

About Matthew White

Matthew White is an independent design consultant with a background in Engineering and Design. His main client is B&Q plc, the world’s third largest DIY retailer. Working in many areas of the business he has created products which are sold in store and is working on many more.

Having studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art he went on to work as a Research Associate for the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre in 2000. This gave the opportunity to begin work with B&Q researching the use of power tools for those with reduced strength and dexterity. The project produced four product concepts and 5 associated patent applications. Two of the projects were developed by Matthew to become the Sandbug and Gofer, two power tools currently on sale in B&Q stores and around the world. This pattern of a user centred focus producing realistic innovation and design has continued as Matthew works in many areas within B&Q to develop products. In the last two years many garden products designed and developed by Matthew have been launched by B&Q in the UK market. These include Barbeques, Patio Heaters and fire pits.

www.diy.com

CONNECTING

Jarmo  Lehtonen

Design Research Manager, Design for All

Nokia Design, Finland

Connecting People - Design for All

Making intuitive and user-friendly products has always been an essential part of Nokia’s product philosophy and one of our core assets. Historically, Nokia´s greatest achievements have resulted from superior usability over the competition. Accessibility issues are clearly emerging on the agenda worldwide, as populations are ageing and mobility is becoming the norm of communications. In short, access to mobiles and related services can soon be regarded as a basic human right.

About Jarmo Lehtonen

Jarmo Lehtonen, aged 43, born in Oulu in Mid of Finland, has completed Master of Art studies in University of Art & Design in Helsinki, Finland 1994. He has multifaceted design education and working experiences before Nokia in various companies and fields of design practises.

Since 1998 he has been part of Nokia Design team. Nokia career and learnings cover decade long experience in various roles from leading numerous design projects, design categories style & content work, business group design, research & concepting and recently (Nokia Italy '04-07) design management work with Asia and US operator designs.

Today he is located in Nokia Espoo headquarter working with Nokia Design Discovery & Strategy Team as Design Research Manager with Focus Research and Projects. Focus is usability and accessibility, Design for All.

About Nokia

Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks.

Read about Nokias accessibility work >>

CONNECTING

Clive Grinyer

Director of Customer Experience

Cisco

Designing technology to work, for all of us

We place our trust in technology to provide solutions to life. But technology on it's own, developed in the wrong way, creates as many problems as it solves. With examples from the mobile, web and products, this talk will look at where we go wrong and how design thinking can enhance our ability to deliver a world that works for all.

About Clive Grinyer

Clive Grinyer is Director of Customer Experience at Cisco’s IBSG consultancy group, who develop future visions of technology and customer experience for the world’s leading companies. He was previously Director of Design and Usability at Orange France Telecom where he was responsible for product and user interface design for Orange mobile and web services. He worked in the Orange ExploCentre in Paris developing the next generation of communication services across mobile, fixed line, pc, tv and the internet and developed for the first time a range of Orange branded mobile phones.

Clive has held senior design management roles in consultancy and corporate design. He worked for IDEO in the US and UK, was European head of product design for Fitch and was a founder of design company Tangerine with Jonathan Ive (now VP of design at Apple).

As Director of Design for Samsung he set up the award winning European design team in London, and was head of design for TAG McLaren Audio, a collaboration of the watch and Formula 1 racing brands. He went on to be Director of Design at the Design Council, creating the design demonstration projects where designers engage directly with UK manufacturing and technology companies.

Clive is a passionate advocate for design and design thinking, writes and speaks at conferences on design innovation and technology, and is the author of the book “Smart Design”.

MOVING

Toshimitsu Sadamura

President

GA-TAP, Inc, Japan

The inclusive design project of the Fukuoka City Tube Nanakuma Line

The Nanakuma Line of Fukuoka City Subway is a new tube that opened in February 2005. GA-TAP, Inc was commissioned to develop complete designs for stations, facilities, trains, signs and rail yards. The design project began in 1995, and during the first year they conducted a thorough survey of different users. The research showed that there were two kinds of barriers that prevented users from using the tube system: “Barriers relating to mobility” (physically-challenged, elderly people, pregnant women, people with children and those who carry baggage) , and  “barriers relating to information” (people with visual and hearing disabilities, mentally disabled, the elderly, and foreign people).  In this project it was developed a variety of designs and systems to produce a tube system that is accessible to everyone. The project included the following six design maxims:

1. Inclusive design of traffic lines
2. Inclusive design of facilities
3. Inclusive design of walkway areas
4. Offering information by means of symbolized space
5. Offering information to identify stations
6. Inclusive design of signs

About Toshimitsu Sadamura

Toshimitsu Sadamura graduated from the Visual Communication Design Department of Kyushu Institute of Design (Currently Kyushu University School of Design) in 1975. He joined GA-TAP, Inc. the same year, and was mainly in charge of corporate ad designs. In 1982, he designed signs and furniture at Uminonakamichi National Seaside Park and won many awards including the Japan Sign Design Award. He is one of the few designers who can make a bilateral approach from the fields of communication design and space design. “Universal Design of Nanakuma Line, Subway in Fukuoka City,” presented at the The 2nd International Conference for Universal Design in Kyoto 2006 has been highly appreciated worldwide. Last year he presented the project at international design conferences in Beijing, Seoul and London to mention some.

About GA-TAP, Inc

GA-TAP, Inc, headed by Toshimitsu Sadamura, takes a unique approach by offering total designs by designers from various fields such as architecture, as well as graphic and product design. They mainly provide designs relating to the environment and communication. For the total inclusive design project they did with the Nanakuma Line in Fukuoka city they were praised by the Japanese Cabinet Office for promoting barrier-free access. GA-TAP also won the Good Design Award as well as the SDA award presented by the Japanese Ministry of the Economy and Trade and Industry, among many others, in addition to attracting worldwide attention. Inclusive Design of the Public Transportation System providing detailed coverage of the design development of the Nanakuma Line, is published by Senden Kaigi Sha. In addition to developing designs for public transportation systems, GA-TAP has also been commissioned to provide total designs and inclusive designs at hospitals and banks.

Visit GA-TAPs website >>