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This report explores a one day workshop using Cards for humanity as a tool to engage with accessible and inclusive design. As a visible Indian Muslim woman, growing up in Croydon, navigating an adult dyslexia diagnosis, I did not have the language to express how ‘othered’ I felt within higher education. My student experiences was a transformative period for positive and negative reasons. I became sceptical of existing in the design industry as a hyper-visible Muslim women of colour, I never saw myself within my peers, the staff or in the references we were taught from. However, this made me a compassionate educator that could address difficulties such as studying a subject with no prior industry links, the pressures of not pursuing an “academic” career, or feeling like a token in a Euro-centric environment.
This workshop aims to make higher education more inclusive, by encouraging students to be open to diverse perspectives, narratives and experiences. bell hooks explains that “when we are taught that safety lies in sameness, then difference, of any kind will appear as a threat.” (hooks, 2001). She highlights the importance of sharing narratives and valuing differences. This can include learning about lived experiences as well as challenging ways of working to be more inclusive. Reflecting on my student experience, accessible design was unfortunately not part of the curriculum. This workshop enables students to consider visible and invisible disabilities when creating user-centered outcomes.
I intend to run this intervention with 1st year Graphic Design students at Camberwell, UAL.
The cohort includes (UAL Active Dashboards Student Profiles: Summary Grids, n.d.):
- home students (46%), EU students (9%) and international students (45%).
- 75% are female, 24% are male and 1% are non-binary/ other.
- 22% of students have declared a disability.
- Of the 46% home students, 21% were first-generation students.
This workshop has been informed by the writings of bell hooks, Judith V. Jordan, Harriet L. Schwartz and Carol Azumah Dennis. I advocate for opportunities that allow me to expand a student’s understanding of Graphic design and its impact on communities. With my industry experience, I value collaborative working and learning with other designers or communities to create thoughtful outcomes. According to Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, an education experience must strive to create opportunities for inter-group collaboration and teamwork, allowing them to focus on their commonalities instead of their differences (Hahn Tapper, 2013) while working towards a common goal.
Charley Pothecary believes that “suppose you strive to make the service experience as easy… as possible for those navigating a crisis… you will have made a better service for everyone” (Pothecary, 2021). There is much to gain by making education and the design industry more inclusive. The Equality in Higher Education, Student Statistical report 2021 states that 14.6% of UK students disclosed as disabled (Advance HE, 2021). Within UAL’s BA Graphic Design course, around 22% of students have declared a disability. This does not account for the number of students (and staff) who are unaware they have a disability or have chosen not to disclose it.
Additionally, Carol Azumah Dennis explains that we cannot separate education from the political influence it has on the community. “The pedagogic and the political are a continuity. Like critical pedagogy, a decolonising education is one that exceeds the confines of school, college or university to intervene in the reinvention of the world” (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nişancıoğlu, 2018). Building compassion and empathy within students is something we should strive for. This works in two folds: students believe their work has the value and power to impact communities, and to bring about social change in the world. It is vital to recognise that what students learn within a higher education setting will be applied outside the institution too, hopefully to shape their communities for the better. With this workshop, I want students to see inclusive and accessible design as an integral part of the design process and something they apply to all future projects.
Action
Cards for Humanity is an online resource developed by Idean. The cards have two decks; one deck describes a person and a specific trait i.e: Jenny Wang, 16, is shy. The second deck has a specific access need to take into consideration, i.e: ‘and has dyslexia.’
This artefact would build students’ ability to become empathetic designers and consider disabilities at every stage of the design process, and therefore their future careers. I previously piloted an extract of this workshop at a different university. One of the student groups were designing for a user with dyslexia. They considered that the user may struggle with being organised and may need a planner to visualise their schedule. They used ‘Dyslexia friendly fonts’ and avoided large amounts of texts as it may be difficult to comprehend.
The structure of the workshop includes open dialogues around inclusive design, Judith V. Jordan and Harriet L. Schwartz revealed that “to work from a place of radical empathy, we must remain open to learning from our students and to acknowledging that learning” (Jordan and Schwartz, 2018). I will share personal examples of where I have felt included through design and encourage the students to do the same. This allows everyone to bring in their intersectional identities and learn about how it impacts the way we engage with the world.
Each group will be given pre-selected characteristics from the Cards for Humanity decks. These characteristics would be supported by resources to help students learn from lived experiences to avoid biases and making assumptions.
The students will create a user persona to narrow down who they are designing for, recognise that people have different needs and how that can be considered within their intervention.
The students will spend the rest of the day, as a group, prototyping outcomes to support their user persona and present to the class. They will receive feedback from me and their peers to emulate an industry experience.
Reflection
I used Cards for Humanity as a tool to learn about the range of needs people can have, in a playful and educational way. As a student, we were constantly encouraged to create work for communities, without considering the parameters of disability and access needs.
Based on the pilot workshop, the challenges I anticipate include:
- students not being sensitive when talking about disabilities, which could upset students with invisible/ undisclosed disabilities.
- Students may feel triggered by the nature of discussions. As I have a duty of care towards my students, I would let them know that they can step out at any point and to debrief with me later.
- Students may want to share their personal experiences with disability/ access needs. It is vital to create an environment where students can share, if they wish, and engage in open, respectful dialogue.
- Some students struggle with public speaking and group work. They could pick their own working groups or pairs. Students can participate and delegate according to their skillsets and strengths.
This is an intervention I would have appreciated as a student. We made work “for everyone” without actually considering difficulties such as language, financial, technological and physical barriers. As a cohort, we regularly held exhibitions to present our work yet rarely questioned why visitors and the student body of UAL Camberwell did not reflect the demographics of its neighbouring communities. Not being conscious of how our actions may unintentionally exclude people does a disservice to the positive impact students want to achieve with their work.
The workshop provides a framework to explore audiences and communities that are different to your own, something students may not have previously considered in their design process. They will use skills such as emotional intelligence, to build the ability to empathise with the user, use constraints as a motivation to design thoughtful interventions, and user research to understand how they could better design for their audience.
Based on the pilot, I have further developed this workshop to support students who struggle with being able to design for a group that they are not part of or have never interacted with before. They may use their assumptions and biases to try and navigate the task better. In order to avoid this within the workshop, I have pre-selected the access needs and will provide students with supplementary resources such as an article, talk, or documentary. These resources will allow students to learn about different narratives through lived experiences to better understand their needs.
Being part of the inclusive practice unit has given me the language to identify the disparities within higher education, and the tools to begin to address it. There are institutional and systemic structures that create barriers for students from different educational backgrounds, abilities and intersectional identities. Matthew Desmond explains how “… other landlords… tried to avoid discrimination by setting clear criteria and holding all applicants to the same standards. But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality.” (Desmond, 2017). A clear example of this is the attainment gap (33%) between BA Graphic design students, where 83% of the home White students achieved a 1st or 2:1 compared to only 50% of the home Black and Asian minority ethnic students. This unit has pushed me to constantly do better as an educator, help students see themselves within the industry by using diverse references, catering to the range of different learning needs and encouraging them to bring areas of themselves into higher education to make it their own.
Bibliography:
Advance HE, 2021. Equality in higher education Students statistical report 2021. [online] p.85. Available at: <https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/advance-he/AdvHE_Equality%20in%20HE_statistical-report_Students_2021_1635342359.pdf?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIATYAYEYO3HUY745WI%2F20220608%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20220608T194049Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=604800&X-Amz-Signature=24b0034807dbb8ca990cc803fdf795fe52b70d6e462082bbe85a30398b3783dc> [Accessed 11 August 2022].
Bhambra, G., Gebrial, D. and Nişancıoğlu, K., 2018. Decolonising the university. Pluto Press, p.199.
Desmond, M., 2017. Evicted. Penguin, p.252.
Hahn Tapper, A., 2013. A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 30(4), p.416.
hooks, b., 2001. All about love. WmMorrowPB, p.93.
Jordan, J. and Schwartz, H., 2018. Radical Empathy in Teaching. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2018(153), p.28.
n.d. UAL Active Dashboards Student Profiles: Summary Grids. [online] Available at: <https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=bef5369d-9952-4bb2-a862-c630eaad431e&dashcontextid=637953126332640898> [Accessed 11 August 2022].
Pothecary, C., 2021. Design for people at the worst and best moments of their lives. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://charleypoth.medium.com/design-for-people-at-the-worst-and-best-moments-of-their-lives-ef81ef2247a7> [Accessed 11 August 2022].
Appendix:
- Pilot workshop Miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_ljX4tmM=/?invite_link_id=947365545130
- Artefact – Cards for Humanity: https://cardsforhumanity.idean.com/