When users cannot be included in inclusive design

Inclusive Design (ID) methods place a strong emphasis on user participation in designing mainstream products. In recent years researchers in the field of assistive technology (AT) have drawn on and contributed to the ID approach. There are good grounds for this association. However, the linkage elides the differences in methods that are available and appropriate to designers in the respective fields. The demands required by strategies such as co-creation, focus groups, cultural probes and even simple interviewing can be above the capacities of the users of AT. Yet the impairments of ill and disabled users make the need for useability and pleasurability even more important since alternative products are comparatively few. This paper examines the workarounds two teams of designers have used to reduce the demands placed on emphysema patients and elderly users during inclusive design processes. In the case of a student design project it was necessary to focus on a super-user, use prototyping as a creative tool and to use improvised ergonomic simulation. In a second case a consultancy was required to place more emphasis on ethnographic, observational methods and personas where co-creation and co-design proved to be beyond the capacities of the user-group.