Inclusive Design at the Design Museum

The GDI Hub team recently went to the Design Museum in London to explore collaboration opportunities around Inclusive Design Education and continue discussions with their Head of Learning.

While we were on site, we also took the chance to visit the amazing Beazley Designs of 2018 exhibition https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/beazley-designs-of-the-year-2018 . We were highly impressed with some of the designs in terms of using tech for good and wanted to share them with you:

• Paperfuge is a low tech way to perform blood tests being developed by Foldscope https://www.foldscope.com/
• Quicksee is a portable eye test that anyone can use being developed by PlenOptika https://plenoptika.com/
• ENEA walking stick is an elegant more functional walking stick being developed by Shiro Studio http://www.shiro-studio.com/
• Choose Love Shop is the world’s first shop where you can buy real products for refugees
• https://helprefugees.org/news/choose-love-store-2018/
• Verificado19s is a website that collates vital information following a natural disaster, designed by an anonymous collective. It is a good example of a crowdsourced platform used for verifying information http://www.verificado19s.org/
• JINS is timeless eyewear designed by https://www.jins.com/us/ Their x4 frame designs have universal appeal regardless of age, gender, ethnicity. They could also be used as an option for cheap eyewear in developing countries.
• Self-healing skin for prosthetic and robot limbs developed by the University of Colorado Boulder https://www.colorado.edu/today/2018/02/09/new-malleable-electronic-skin-self-healable-recyclable

These are just some examples. We at GDI Hub are keen to ensure that any assistive technology we have a hand in developing fosters and encourages good design generally. This aspect cannot be underestimated as people want and will only continue to use products of good design quality.

This exhibition is an example of what is being and could be designed for the greater good. There is definitely a great opportunity here to connect the world’s best designers (upcoming and established) to the countless challenges in assistive technology we are uncovering as part of our work at GDI Hub, with AT2030 and beyond.